Browsing by Subject "Bioinformatiikka"

The emergence of antibiotic resistance is a growing concern globally. The horizontal spread of antimicrobial resistance genes (ARG) causes multi drug resistant strains that can be harmful to human- and animal health. This risk must be considered when new bacterial strains are used in the plant protection industry, therefore this master’s thesis presents a new bioinformatical method to evaluate the potential of ARG to horizontally transfer to another bacteria. This thesis will walk through analyses that can be used to hunt for ARGs and mobile genetic elements (MGE) in bacterial whole genome sequence data. Also, this thesis presents a new computational analysis tool called MGEradar that reveals MGEs that are linked to a specific ARG. Also, this thesis presents a simple metod for studying the prevalence of an ARG among other bacterial strains of the suspect species. MGEradar, the prevalence analysis and the bioinformatical pipeline can be helpful tools to evaluate the intrinsicness and mobility of an ARG. For the evaluation of the bioinformatical method, the genomes of Escherichia coli and Bacillus thuringiensis are examined to determine the MGEs associated with two ARGs, mcr-1 and fosB.