Project description
Tracking antibiotic resistance in our waters
Invisible threats lurk in the water we drink, swim in, and use to grow food. Antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs), which help bacteria survive medicines, can spread through rivers, lakes, and seas, potentially turning harmless microbes into dangerous pathogens. But how big is this risk and what drives it? Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the REWARD project investigates. By examining water from eight European ecosystems, scientists track the genetic elements that carry and share resistance. Using advanced sequencing and innovative tools, REWARD explores how environmental factors, including human activity and climate change, influence resistance spread, aiming to monitor, predict, and reduce this growing threat.
Objective
Antibiotic resistance is a major global public health threat. There is a growing concern that aquatic environments, which are in contact with the human microbiome in both urban and rural settings (drinking water, recreational bathing, crop irrigation), may serve as a reservoir of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) that might disseminate to human pathogens through horizontal gene transfer (HGT). However, the magnitude of this dissemination risk and the mechanisms involved remain unknown. REWARD (REsistance to antibiotics in Water: Assessment of the Risk of Dissemination) aims to identify the major drivers of human health risk and establish biomarkers for the monitoring and mitigation of antibiotic resistance dissemination in aquatic environments. REWARD will fill current knowledge gaps on the prevalence and ARG content of mobile genetic elements (MGE, plasmids and bacteriophages) in the aquatic environment, the frequency and genetic responses driving ARG HGT from these MGE to human pathogens, the impact of environmental and anthropogenic stresses on MGE prevalence and HGT frequency and the magnitude of the ARG dissemination risk to human pathogens in aquatic ecosystems. River and sea water from 8 aquatic ecosystems across Europe will be analyzed. The main drivers (MGE and genes) of ARG dissemination to fluorescent-labelled human pathogens added to surface waters will be determined using a combination of flow cytometry, last-generation metagenomic and metatranscriptomic sequencing technologies and newly-developed bioinformatic approaches for the reconstruction of MGE from metagenomic reads. Physiochemical and anthropogenic variables will be characterized in river water samples to establish dose-response links between anthropogenic and environmental stresses (including stresses linked to climate change) and ARG HGT in aquatic environments. Finally, a mathematical model to quantitively predict ARG dissemination risk will be developed using the data generated in REWARD.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- medical and health sciences medical biotechnology genetic engineering gene therapy
- medical and health sciences health sciences public health epidemiology epidemics prevention
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences atmospheric sciences climatology climatic changes
- natural sciences biological sciences microbiology
- natural sciences mathematics applied mathematics mathematical model
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
1165 KOBENHAVN
Denmark
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