Antimicrobial resistance in aquatic systems

Antimicrobial resistance poses a significant threat to public health worldwide, which is currently recognized as a multifaceted problem. Therefore, to tackle
this problem, the World Health Organization has advocated for a "One Health" approach that recognizes the interconnectedness of human health, animal health and the environment. In this regard, the spread of antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs) into the environment is likely understudied compared to the human and animal health. This research lines aims to understand how antimicrobial mechanisms reach natural communities, especially aquatic environments. 

Therefore, we have developed a novel project to study antimicrobial resistance in sewage systems: ARGOS. ARGOS is the acronym of: "Antimicrobial Resistance by metaGenomics Overview in a Sewage system". It is a Spanish national research project (PID2023-147830NA-I00) awarded in 2024 to Rafael Laso Pérez in which we aim to use omics' approaches to investigate the distribution and abundance of antimicrobial resistance in wastewater systems, specifically at the Canal de Isabel II. The main objectives of the project are three:

- To profile the main antimicrobial resistance genes present in the different locations of a sewage system.

- To identify hotspots within the systems where novel forms of resistance are introduced

- To evaluate the impact of wastewater treatments plants into the resistome

The project started at the end of 2024, and we have started the samplings in July 2025. Two people of the group are involved in this project: Alejandro Rodríguez and Víctor López. Víctor is actually funded by the regional government of Madrid with a research assistant contract (PEJ-2024-AI/ECO-31856). We have developed some bioinformatic pipelines to study our metagenomic samples that we will transfer to analyze other aquatic environments.