Grant recipient

Patrick Munk

Multi-microbiome approaches for genomic mining of hidden antimicrobials and drug resistance (MULTIBIOMINE)

Grant amount: DKK 10,992,480

Bacteria have waged chemical warfare for billions of years. Their metaphorical armory of weapons and shields are antibiotics and antibiotic resistance respectively. As humans have appropriated antibiotics, resistance proliferates globally and now kills 1.3 million people annually.

To slow this silent pandemic we need to both find new weapons and understand which bacteria are shielded from what weapon. Growing public microbiome datasets can help us do that, but there a number of issues. They contain a large layer of metagenomic dark matter we don’t understand and our current analyses are done sample-by-sample and don’t exploit how different datasets synergistically can inform each other.

There are a number of obstacles to solve before we can recover both the useful and harmful microbial armory hidden in global microbiomes. With this project, I seek to develop new computational approaches, make computer programs and harvest the hidden armory for humanity to exploit and slow the AMR pandemic.

Picture credits: Lars Svankjær / The Young Academy of Denmark