ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Infectious Agents and Disease
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1669208
This article is part of the Research TopicRapid and Efficient Analytical Technologies for Pathogen DetectionView all 16 articles
Exploring Drug Resistance Genes of Acinetobacter baumannii by Metagenomic Next-Generation Sequencing
Provisionally accepted
- 1Huazhong University of Science and Technology Union Shenzhen Hospital, Shenzhen, China
- 2Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI), Shenzhen, China
- 3Shenzhen Nanshan People's Hospital, Shenzhen, China
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With the rising incidence of infectious diseases, the overuse of antibiotics has become serve problem in clinic. Culture-based methods for detecting antimicrobial resistance are often time-consuming and labor-intensive. In recent years, metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) offers advantages such as rapid turnaround, broad-spectrum detection, and comprehensive coverage; however, its utility for drug resistance testing remains to be fully established. In this study, we evaluated the effectiveness of mNGS in detecting antimicrobial resistance in Acinetobacter baumannii using 53 clinical samples and compared its performance with conventional culture-based methods. Among the A. baumannii–positive samples. Class-specific accuracy of mNGS exceeded 80% for β-lactams, aminoglycosides, fluoroquinolones, and minocycline, underscoring its strong performance in comprehensive resistome profiling. We further investigated resistance-associated genes in A. baumannii that appeared with high frequency, including enzymatic inactivation mechanisms (ADC-type cephalosporinases and OXA-type oxacillinases) and efflux systems (AbaQ, AbeM) and RND-type efflux pumps (adeIJK/adeN and adeFGH/adeL).Our findings demonstrate a high concordance between mNGS results and clinical evaluations, highlighting the potential of mNGS as a reliable tool for assessing antimicrobial resistance in A. baumannii.
Keywords: Acinetobacter baumannii, metagenomic next-generation sequencing, Antibioticresistance genes, β-Lactam antibiotics, Minocycline, aminoglycoside, quinolone
Received: 19 Jul 2025; Accepted: 12 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li, Lao, Jiang, Tang, Huang, He, Yuan and Lai. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Lijuan He, lyndi.he@bgi.com
Ke Yuan, yuanke@bgi.com
Xiulan Lai, xiulanlai02@163.com
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