Freshwater Viral Metagenome Reveals Novel and Functional Phage-borne Antibiotic Resistance Genes Kira Moon Inha University Ilnam Kang Inha University Kwang Seung Park Myongji University Jeong Ho Jeon Myongji University Kihyun lee Chung-Ang University Chang-Jun Cha Chung-Ang University Sang Hee Lee (
[email protected] ) Myongji University Jang-Cheon Cho (
[email protected] ) Inha University https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0666-3791 Research Keywords: Bacteriophage, Viral metagenome, Virome, Antibiotic resistance gene, Minimum inhibitory concentration, β-lactamase, River Posted Date: December 5th, 2019 DOI: https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.2.18207/v1 License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Read Full License Version of Record: A version of this preprint was published on June 1st, 2020. See the published version at https://doi.org/10.1186/s40168-020-00863-4. Page 1/25 Abstract Background Antibiotic resistance developed by bacteria is a signicant threat to global health. Antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) spread across different bacterial populations through multiple dissemination routes, including horizontal gene transfer mediated by bacteriophages. ARGs carried by bacteriophages are considered especially threatening due to their prolonged persistence in the environment, fast replication rates, and ability to infect phylogenetically remote bacterial hosts. Several studies employing qPCR and viral metagenomics have shown that viral fraction and viral sequence reads in clinical and environmental samples carry many ARGs. However, only a few ARGs have been found in viral contigs assembled from metagenome reads, with most of these genes lacking effective antibiotic resistance phenotypes. Owing to the wide application of viral metagenomics, nevertheless, different classes of ARGs are being continuously found in viral metagenomes acquired from diverse environments.