Antimicrobial Resistance at the Environmental-Clinical Interface: Gene Flow across Aquatic Ecosystems and Human Health

Antimicrobial resistance poses one of the most critical threats to clinical medicine, driven not only by selective pressure within healthcare settings but increasingly by resistance gene reservoirs in the surrounding environment. Despite growing evidence that environmental ecosystems serve as major sources of clinically relevant resistance determinants, surveillance and intervention strategies have remained largely focused on hospital-acquired pathogens.Aquatic environments, including rivers, wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), agricultural irrigation systems, and groundwater, function as critical interfaces where bacteria of human, animal, and environmental origin converge. Continuous exposure to antibiotic residues, resistant organisms, and mobile genetic elements (MGEs) in these settings creates conditions that sustain and amplify resistance gene pools with direct implications for clinical practice.Recent advances in genomic epidemiology, metagenomics, and high-throughput sequencing have illuminated the pathways through which resistance genes travel from environmental reservoirs into clinically relevant pathogens. Horizontal gene transfer (HGT), mediated by plasmids, integrons, transposons, and bacteriophages, enables resistance determinants to cross ecological and taxonomic boundaries, ultimately reaching bacteria responsible for hospital and community infections.This Research Topic aims to characterize the environmental origins of clinically relevant AMR, with a focus on how gene flow across aquatic ecosystems shapes the resistance profiles of pathogens at the human interface.- Genomic epidemiology across environmental and clinical interfaces- Environmental resistomes and clinical risk assessment- One Health approach for integrated AMR surveillance- Horizontal gene transfer mediating environment-to-clinic resistance transmission- Mobile genetic elements and ARG dissemination in clinically relevant pathogens- Wastewater treatment plants as hotspots for resistance evolution- Anthropogenic pressures driving resistome selection Topic editors: Humberto Barrios Camacho, Josefina Duran, Sara María Soto Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/82994/antimicrobial-resistance-at-the-environmental-clinical-interface-gene-flow-across-aquatic-ecosystems-and-human-health