This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"The rapid spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a growing public health and environmental problem, except, presumably, in remote regions like Antarctica. Antarctica is considered the most pristine continent because of its minimal human activity confined to specific research stations, so it’s an ideal location to study the early mechanisms of AMR acquisition. Existing evidence suggests that although human gut bacteria have colonized native wildlife around research stations, AMR in birds and seals is minimal. However, the research so far has been limited, and the standards and methods used have varied widely. In addition, much of the continent remains unsampled, making a comprehensive AMR assessment impossible. Implementation of continent-wide standards for AMR reporting would help future studies produce meaningful and comparable results that can be used to understand AMR acquisition in other regions of the globe..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Deep-sea hydrothermal vent ecosystems host an array of macrofauna, including many invertebrates. These animals adapt to the extreme conditions by forging endosymbiotic relationships with chemoautotrophic bacteria. Phages, viruses that infect prokaryotes, can fundamentally affect endosymbiotic bacteria, but their specific roles in deep-sea vent endosymbionts are not yet known. A recent study utilized metagenomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics to examine the endosymbiotic phages associated with the deep-sea vent snail Gigantopelta aegis. These phages infected methane- and sulfur-oxidizing bacteria, and there was evidence of both lysogenic and lytic lifecycles. The genomes also showed evidence of an arms race between bacteria and phages, with the bacteria encoding defense systems like CRISPR–Cas to break down phage DNA and the phages encoding their own anti-defense mechanisms. The phages also had horizontally acquired auxiliary metabolic genes, which could benefit replication..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

Biology is designed for multi-semester biology courses for science majors. It is grounded on an evolutionary basis and includes exciting features that highlight careers in the biological sciences and everyday applications of the concepts at hand. To meet the needs of today’s instructors and students, some content has been strategically condensed while maintaining the overall scope and coverage of traditional texts for this course. Instructors can customize the book, adapting it to the approach that works best in their classroom. Biology also includes an innovative art program that incorporates critical thinking and clicker questions to help students understand—and apply—key concepts.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:Describe horizontal gene transferIllustrate how prokaryotes and eukaryotes transfer genes horizontallyIdentify the web and ring models of phylogenetic relationships and describe how they differ from the original phylogenetic tree concept

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Multidrug-resistant bacteria are a threat to both human and animal health worldwide. Bacteria often gain resistance to drugs by collecting antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) from other bacteria. One potential hotbed for this exchange is wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), where environmental bacteria co-mingle with human/animal-associated bacteria. Unfortunately, little is known about the epidemiology of multidrug-resistant bacteria in WWTPs. To close this gap, researchers isolated 82 multidrug-resistant bacterial strains from WWTPs and compared their genomes to bacterial genomes found in public databases. Most multidrug-resistant bacteria were not closely related to human/animal-associated bacteria, and those that were closely related had distinct plasmid profiles compared to relatives. Plasmids, as opposed to chromosomes, were also the main carriers of ARGs..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Antibiotic resistance is a growing threat to global public health. While antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) can arise in many different environments, environments with heavy antibiotic use, such as livestock farms and hospitals, are of particular concern. ARGs can then spread to human pathogens via horizontal gene transfer and the inhalation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria presents a particularly dangerous route of exposure. Thus, a recent study characterized the resistome found in the fine particulate matter from hospital air. The hospital airborne particulate samples had nearly twice the ARG abundance of ambient urban air samples, and up to 30% of the hospital microbiome was from human-associated sources, which highlights the risk of potentially resistant pathogens. The resistome varied with clinical activities; in particular the abundance of β-lactam ARGs was associated with the number of in-ward β-lactam resistant cases..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Horizontal gene transfer helps shape bacterial communities and drives the spread of antibiotic resistance. Of the three horizontal gene transfer pathways, conjugation has been studied the most in the context of antibiotic resistance. Antibiotics themselves can trigger these transfers, but the impact of other types of pharmaceuticals in natural environments remains to be explored. To close this gap, researchers examined several common non-antibiotic pharmaceuticals in a model of wastewater treatment plant activated sludge. The tested compounds covered multiple drug classes including an anticonvulsant, a lipid-lowering drug, a β-blocker, and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Environmentally relevant concentrations of the compounds promoted conjugative transfer of IncP1-α, a plasmid that carries antibiotic resistance. Exposure to these compounds spread IncP1-α across entire microbial communities..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"The 16S rRNA gene is widely used for bacterial phylogenetics, species delineation, and microbiome research. Historically, researchers assumed that sequence variations in this gene were only due to speciation and inheritance. But there are reports of recombination events and an unreliable phylogenetic signal. To examine this directly, researchers performed four intra-genus analyses and one inter-genus analysis using pathogenic and core human microbiome genera. In all analyses, the 16S rRNA gene was recombinant and subject to horizontal gene transfer. At the intra-genus level, the 16S rRNA gene averaged 50.7% concordance with the species phylogeny, one of the lowest of the core genes. Further analysis found that the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) count was a major factor influencing concordance. 690 ± 110 SNPs would be required to reach 80% concordance, but the average SNP count for the 16S rRNA gene was only 254..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Antimicrobial resistance is a critical threat to human and animal health. Animal production systems, with their often-heavy use of antibiotics, are a major driver of antibiotic resistance globally. The resistome is the collection of antibiotic resistance genes in a population of bacteria and is a window into the accumulation of antibiotic resistance in a system. A recent study compared the resistomes of an industrialized intensive pig farming system and a traditional extensive farming system. The extensive systems have lower animal densities, outdoor housing, older age at slaughter, and – critically – less antibiotic use compared to the intensive systems. Researchers examined the metagenomes of the pigs’ intestinal microbiomes, the environment on the farm, and the slurry of pig waste. Compared with extensive farms, intensive farms had a higher abundance of antibiotic resistance genes. The class of antibiotics used correlated with the category of resistance genes observed..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Advances in metagenomic sequencing have allowed for the identification of countless novel bacterial taxa in environmental samples. However, due to a lack of appropriate computational tools, the plasmids contained by many of these bacteria have received far less attention. That has restricted research into the important genetic processes plasmids are responsible for, such as horizontal gene transfer and antibiotic resistance. To address this gap, researchers recently developed the Sequence Contents-Aware Plasmid Peeler (SCAPP). An open-source Python package, SCAPP builds upon a previously developed algorithm and uses biological data to assemble plasmid sequences from metagenomic samples. SCAPP was found to outperform existing metagenomic plasmid assembly tools when tested on simulated metagenomes and real human gut microbiome samples. SCAPP could also assemble novel and clinically relevant plasmid sequences in generated samples..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"The transfer of genetic material between microbes, or horizontal gene transfer, plays a critical role in microbial evolution. It’s the process that enables bacteria to quickly acquire resistance to antibiotics. Unfortunately, current tracking methods can only infer what genes were swapped well after a transfer event has occurred. To address this gap, researchers have developed a real-time approach called “transductomics." The technique sequences both the complete microbial community in a sample as well as virus-like particles (VLPs) that serve as the vehicles for horizontal gene transfer. Comparing the sequencing reads between the two reveals patterns that can be linked to DNA transfer. The team tested their approach on a fecal sample obtained from a single mouse. Results showed indications of specialized transduction by different prophages as well as patterns of potential generalized transduction or gene transfer agents. Interestingly, nearly a quarter of the transduction patterns were unknown..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.