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» Go to news main麻豆传媒 scientist leading project to develop new software, database tools to combat antibiotic resistance
A 麻豆传媒 scientist is leading the way in pinpointing and analyzing antibiotic resistance in bacteria by profiling the DNA of entire communities of microbes.
But the clock is ticking for project leader Dr. Robert Beiko, as antibiotics are losing ground to new 鈥榮uperbug鈥 bacteria that have evolved resistance to conventional antibiotics, which threatens to undo nearly a century of medical progress.
鈥淭he problem of antimicrobial resistance is global and is affecting the order of millions of people right now,鈥 Beiko told the Chronicle Herald.
Enter metagenomics, which allows the genetic profiling of microbes as a community.
There remains just one problem: Bacterial DNA datasets mapped out in this way are massive and contain huge amounts of irrelevant data.
Indeed, the increase of data production in recent years has been particularly dramatic in the 鈥榦mics鈥 technologies 鈥 dealing with genomics and related fields of study 鈥 especially in the area of genome sequencing. Some estimates suggest that by 2020, data will be generated at up to one million times the current rate.
That鈥檚 why Beiko and his colleagues Andrew G. McArthur of McMaster University and Simon Fraser University鈥檚 Fiona Brinkman are leading a project to develop new software and database tools that will provide a near-instantaneous profile of bacterial samples.
鈥淭he real challenge in all of this is that these metagenomic methods generate huge amounts of DNA sequential data. Even a small metagenomic run can generate nearly the same amount of DNA equal to a human genome,鈥 said Beiko. 鈥淲e鈥檙e talking tens of millions of genes at a minimum.鈥
The federal government announced Tuesday that it is kicking in $250,000 in funding to Genome Atlantic and project co-lead Ontario Genomics, under whose auspices Beiko and his team are conducting their research.
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