ARGminer: A web platform for the crowdsourcing-based curation of antibiotic resistance genes

Lenwood Heath

Abstract

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has been identified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a major global health threat. It is projected that AMR will increase exponentially by 2050, leading to substantial human morbidity and mortality (O’Neill, 2016; Pires et al., 2017). Therefore, swift action is required to enable enhanced monitoring and to help tackle the spread of AMR, including: under- standing the mechanisms controlling dissemination of antibiotic re- sistance genes (ARGs) via environmental sources and pathways (Bengtsson-Palme et al., 2018; Martı ́nez, 2008; Pruden et al., 2013), discovering novel ARGs before they are found to be problematic in the clinic (Berglund et al., 2017), developing new computational strategies for ARG annotation (Arango-Argoty et al., 2018; Gibson et al., 2015; Lakin et al., 2017; McArthur et al., 2013; Yang et al., 2016) and expansion of current ARG repositories (Arango-Argoty et al., 2018; Lakin et al., 2017).