2026-10-13T16:13:50Z https://www.scidb.cn/oai

10.57760/sciencedb.42163 2026-07-08T20:38:42Z

2026-07-08 Evolutionary arms races dictate the boundaries of phage-mediated antimicrobial resistance transfer in priority pathogens doi:10.57760/sciencedb.42163 en The escalation of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) demands precision interventions against priority pathogens, yet the ecological and genetic dynamics governing phage-mediated biocontrol remain incompletely elucidated. Here, we present a global pan-genomic analysis of the priority pathogens including 13,238 fecal coliform bacteria (FCB) and ESKAPEE alongside their 38,952 associated bacteriophages. We reveal a profound asymmetry in AMR reservoirs: while bacterial genomes are hyper-enriched with antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs; averaging 45.9 copies per genome), viral carriage is rare (1.5%), with predicted phage-mediated transduction restricted to a mere 0.11% of the identified phage-host interactions. This severe horizontal transfer bottleneck is dictated by a fierce evolutionary arms race. Host bacteria deploy massive antiviral defense systems (ADS, averaging 23.7 ADS per genome) that paradoxically collude to intercept exogenous ARG-bearing plasmids. We assumed that phages heavily prioritize anti-defense systems rather than passive ARGs shuttles. Translating these macro-evolutionary insights, we computationally selected and isolated lytic phages that successfully eradicated multidrug-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae under complex ecological pressures in real treated wastewater. Together, these findings decode the genetic rules of phage-host arms races, establishing a new framework for deploying phages to dismantle environmental AMR transmission chains FCB; ESKAPEE; phage Luoyao Wen Junya Zhang PUBLIC https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ dataset Science Data Bank