Metagenomics: aid to combat antimicrobial resistance in diarrhea

Metagenomics is expensive, labor-intensive, requiring sterling skills for wet-lab techniques, rigorous training for the operation of highly sophisticated instruments and expertise for analysis of high-throughput data of billions of sequence reads. Inspite of these stringent requirements it has intense and wide applicability.

It has helped in rapid characterization of taxonomically diverse members of the microbiota, discovery of organisms de novo, discovery of novel antibiotics and novel antibiotic synthesis pathways and in elucidation of new drug targets. It has provided significant insight into antibacterial action of bacterial proteins. These are examples of gigantic progress towards the development of alternative antimicrobial therapy. Metagenomics has provided the basis for limitless perusal of intensive understanding of the physiological processes governing the microbiota. It has helped in paving innumerable future possibilities to counteract AMR and which are crucial for the prevention of diseases and for disease management. It has emerged as an indispensible tool for the diagnosis of diarrhea. It has helped scientists to sew up the gaps in molecular taxonomy and to recognize potential applications of prospective metagenomes.