Resistome in raccoon dog (Nyctereutes procyonoides) feces is patterned seasonally rather than geographically in Korea. feces

In this study, we aimed to investigate the resistome (collection of ARGs) in the feces of urban and rural raccoon dogs in Korea using shotgun metagenomic sequencing. Given that raccoon dogs can thrive in both urban and rural environments, we reasoned that they may serve as sentinels to assess the extent of the impact of antimicrobial contamination in diverse ecosystems. In this study, we conducted seasonal fecal sampling in each environment to observe seasonal differences, and also analyzed not only ARGs but also bacterial flora and virulence factor genes (VFGs) by taking advantage of metagenomic sequencing, a non-targeted method. Additionally, we performed network analysis to examine the relationship between ARGs and pathogenic bacterial genera associated with VFGs. We expect that understanding the geographic and seasonal differences in ARGs will provide valuable insight into how anthropogenic activities and other factors influence the prevalence of ARGs in the environment and the risks associated with them.