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Arjun Prasad edited this page Aug 16, 2021 · 78 revisions

NCBI Antimicrobial Resistance Gene Finder Plus (AMRFinderPlus)

Overview for AMRFinderPlus 3.10

This software and the accompanying database identify acquired antimicrobial resistance genes in bacterial protein and/or assembled nucleotide sequences as well as known resistance-associated point mutations for several taxa. With AMRFinderPlus we added select members of additional classes of genes such as virulence factors, biocide, heat, acid, and metal resistance genes.

By default the results returned by AMRFinderPlus will be similar to those returned by the original AMRFinder and include antimicrobial resistance genes of known function. Use the --plus option to include results that include additional classes of genes like virulence factors, biocide, heat, acid, and metal resistance genes.

This release is incompatible with previous versions of the database. Run amrfinder -u to get the most recent release version of the database before using. See New in AMRFinderPlus and the list of releases for more information on what's new.

Installation

AMRFinder requires BLAST and HMMER. We provide instructions using BioConda to install the prerequisites.

Installation Instructions

Running AMRFinderPlus

Examples
Usage (syntax/options)
Tips and tricks

Methods

AMRFinder can be run in multiple modes with protein sequence as input and/or with DNA sequence as input. To get maximum information it should be run with both protein and nucleotide. When run with protein sequence it uses both BLASTP and HMMER to search protein sequences for AMR genes along with a hierarchical tree of gene families to classify and name novel sequences. With nucleotide sequences it uses BLASTX translated searches and the hierarchical tree of gene families. Adding the --organism option enables screening for point mutations in select organisms and suppresses the reporting of some that are extremely common in those organisms.

Running AMRFinderPlus
Interpreting results
Methods
AMRFinderPlus database

A note about ABRicate

Many people use ABRicate with the default "ncbi" database. It has come to our attention that at least some of those users think they are getting the same results they would get from AMRFinderPlus and that NCBI recommends. ABRicate uses a subset of the AMRFinderPlus database and different methods to do AMR gene detection. While we love Torsten and ABRicate, the results are not the same as those you would get by running AMRFinderPlus. To identify AMR genes from assembled sequence we recommend using AMRFinderPlus to get the full value out of the NCBI compiled database, including correct gene symbols, named allele vs. novel allele determination, protein-based search/naming, curated cutoffs, HMM searches, etc.

Related Resources

amrfinder-announce mailing list

Subscribe to the amrfinder-announce mailing list to get updates when we release new versions of the software or database. This is a low-traffic list.

Help

If you have any questions about or experience problems running AMRFinderPlus, please contact pd-help@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

See Version 1 documentation for the old AMRFinder version 1 software

License / Public Domain Notice

Publication

See our our AMRFinderPlus paper for more details.

Citation

AMRFinderPlus

Feldgarden M, Brover V, Gonzalez-Escalona N, Frye JG, Haendiges J, Haft DH, Hoffmann M, Pettengill JB, Prasad AB, Tillman GE, Tyson GH, Klimke W. AMRFinderPlus and the Reference Gene Catalog facilitate examination of the genomic links among antimicrobial resistance, stress response, and virulence. Sci Rep. 2021 Jun 16;11(1):12728. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-91456-0. PMID: 34135355; PMCID: PMC8208984.

AMRFinder

Feldgarden M, Brover V, Haft DH, Prasad AB, Slotta DJ, Tolstoy I, Tyson GH, Zhao S, Hsu CH, McDermott PF, Tadesse DA, Morales C, Simmons M, Tillman G, Wasilenko J, Folster JP, Klimke W. Validating the AMRFinder Tool and Resistance Gene Database by Using Antimicrobial Resistance Genotype-Phenotype Correlations in a Collection of Isolates. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2019 Oct 22;63(11):e00483-19. doi: 10.1128/AAC.00483-19. Erratum in: Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2020 Mar 24;64(4): PMID: 31427293; PMCID: PMC6811410.

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