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FDA Launches Visualization Tool for Antibiotic Resistance Genes

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration launched an interactive research tool called Resistome Tracker. Resistome Tracker is one of the first publicly available tools to provide visually informative displays of antibiotic resistance genes in bacteria. It is designed mainly for public health officials, academics and researchers who are using new genomics technologies to track and treat infectious diseases. Resistome Tracker’s interactive interface allows users to customize visualizations by antibiotic drug class, compare resistance genes across different sources, identify new resistance genes, and map selected resistance genes to geographic region. Currently, Resistome Tracker is focused on antibiotic resistance genes in SalmonellaSalmonella genome sequences from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) public databases are uploaded to Resistome Tracker on a weekly basis, allowing near real-time monitoring of antibiotic resistance. Presently, Resistome Tracker includes WGS data on 97,390 genomes from NCBI, 27,512 of which are U.S. isolates and 8,900 are isolates from the NARMS. Future iterations of the tool will include data on other microorganisms such as E. coli and Campylobacter as well as additional gene categories such as serotype, sequence type and virulence genes.

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