Summary
This project focuses on the understanding of the role of the marine environment in the evolution of pathogenic bacteria and on the evaluation of the risk to human health posed by the presence of reservoirs of harmful clones in coastal waters, also in the light of the on fast growing anthropic impact on marine ecosystems, this project aims at: (i) identifying the genetic events environmental settings and factors that favour the emergence and spread of virulent and antibiotic resistant bacteria; (ii) studying bacterial communities of particular micro-environments (microplastics and chitin-containing exoskeleton of zooplankton) that might constitute pathogen and harmful bacterial clones reservoirs. Both these aims imply NGS metagenomic analysis for their accurate recognition and identification. Metagenomic data will be mined for: microbial taxonomic variability between samples/sampling sites and their surrounding environment and environmentally relevant functional genes; chemotaxis/motility/quorum sensing; pathogens, VIR and AR genes; plastics- and polysaccharide-binding and biodegradation genes.

Objectives
The specific objectives of the project are:
• Characterization of the marine environments differently impacted by human activity in order to contribute to the knowledge of environmental resistome and role of environmental settings and microplastic in the evolution and spread of virulent bacterial clones.
• Identification of marine microbial reservoirs of AR and VIR genes. All samples will be processed for cultivation attempts to recover AR and VIR Vibrio sp. in order to characterize these strains and to compare them with those coming from the pristine environments. Altogether, these data will give a comprehensive picture of the marine microbial community as regards its carriage of genes possibly involved in the evolution of human pathogenic and antibiotic resistant bacteria. A particular focus on Vibrio spp. will be made due to the fact that V. cholerae is a well known model of the HGT-mediated evolution of pathogenic bacterial clones in the marine environment.

Project Partners
• Università degli Studi di Genova (Italy)
• Università Politecnica delle Marche (Italy)