Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR): From the Environment to Health
A special issue of Microorganisms (ISSN 2076-2607). This special issue belongs to the section "Antimicrobial Agents and Resistance".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 March 2026 | Viewed by 844
Special Issue Editor
Interests: antimicrobial resistance; bacterial evolution; plasmid; horizontal gene transfer; microbial interactions; pathogens; disinfection; surveillance
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a growing global threat to public health, food security, and sustainable development. The emergence and spread of AMR are driven by a complex interplay of microbial adaptation, environmental pressures, and anthropogenic activities. Understanding the evolutionary pathways of AMR—including mutation, horizontal gene transfer, and selective enrichment—and their robust monitoring are critical for predicting resistance trends and informing intervention strategies.
Environmental factors such as chronic exposure to sub-inhibitory concentrations of antibiotics, disinfectants, and pollutants play a key role in shaping the adaptive landscape of resistance. To track these dynamics, advanced monitoring technologies, including quantitative PCR, metagenomic sequencing, resistome profiling, and machine learning analytics, enable comprehensive surveillance across clinical, environmental, and agricultural contexts. These tools allow for the comprehensive surveillance of resistance genes across environmental, clinical, and agricultural settings. However, monitoring must be complemented by effective control technologies. Novel approaches—such as advanced oxidation processes, targeted antimicrobial peptides, nanomaterials, bacteriophages, and resistome-aware water treatment systems—offer promising solutions to reduce the AMR burden at the source. Integrating these tools within One Health frameworks can enable early detection, source identification, and tailored interventions. Coordinated efforts in AMR evolution research, real-time monitoring, and proactive control technologies are essential to contain resistance and safeguard global health and environmental sustainability.
This Special Issue explores the interconnectedness of environmental AMR emergence, monitoring, evolution, and control, drawing on insights from microbiology, environmental engineering, molecular biology, and One Health approaches. It aims to highlight both mechanistic understanding and technological innovations in tracking and mitigating AMR from environmental reservoirs to human exposure. By bridging environmental and health disciplines, we hope to inform more effective surveillance frameworks, regulatory strategies, and sustainable interventions that address AMR at its environmental roots. Topics of particular interest include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Environmental reservoirs, evolution, and transmission pathways of AMR.
- Surveillance strategies and resistome profiling in environmental matrices.
- Bacterial evolution of AMR and virulence traits.
- Innovative control and mitigation strategies for AMR in water, soil, and waste systems.
- One Health frameworks linking environmental AMR to human and animal health.
- Policy, risk assessment, and regulatory perspectives on environmental AMR.
Reviews, original research, and communications will be welcome.
Dr. Zhigang Yu
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- antimicrobial resistance (AMR)
- environmental resistome
- horizontal gene transfer
- resistance evolution
- virulence and adaptation
- One Health
- AMR surveillance
- disinfection
- metagenomics
- wastewater-based epidemiology
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