Antibiotics under our feet: investigating antimicrobial resistance (Scotland)

The data analysis for this activity of "Antibiotics under our feet" was carried out in collaboration with four Nuffield Research Placement students at the University of St Andrews during the summer of 2023. These students are in the final year of their secondary education in Scotland. They were researching antimicrobial resistance and soil microbes.This dataset consists of a Krona chart visualisation of our bioinformatics results for our first six soil samples sent for DNA sequencing, and a spreadsheet collating and summarising the further information that they found out about unusual phenotypes of pathogens of concern identified in the supplementary material of the Scottish One Health Antimicrobial Use and Antimicrobial Resistance in 2021 Report. The report lists names of micro-organisms, the antimicrobial drug that resistance was identified to and the number of isolates in which this was seen. The students investigated more about the species of microbes, the diseases and conditions they cause, and the methods of actions of the antimicrobials drugs.The Krona chart was used to determine if these species of microbe were present in our soil samples. We are unable to provide any information on the phenotypes of species in our soil samples as the data was acquired through metagenomic sequencing not through the study of any isolates.An interactive human body with information from this dataset was created on the "Antibiotics under our feet" website as part of our public engagement output. Students selected their top 3 microbes of interest. The link to this is included below.