Microbes are masters of survival, evolving ingenious strategies to capture energy from their surroundings. For decades, scientists believed that only a handful of bacteria used specialized molecular “circuits” to shuttle electrons outside their cells — a process known as extracellular electron transfer (EET). This mechanism is critical for cycling carbon, sulfur, nitrogen, and metals in nature, and it underpins applications ranging from wastewater treatment to bioenergy and bioelectronics materials. 

Now, KAUST researchers have discovered that this remarkable ability is far more versatile and widespread than previously imagined. 

Working with Desulfuromonas acetexigens — a bacterium capable of generating high electrical currents — the team combined bioelectrochemistry, genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics to map its electron transfer machinery^[1]. To their surprise, D. acetexigens simultaneously activated three distinct electron transfer pathways previously thought to have evolved separately in unrelated microbes: the metal-reducing (Mtr), outer-membrane cytochrome (Omc), and porin-cytochrome (Pcc) systems. 

“This is the first time we’ve seen a single organism express these phylogenetically distant pathways in parallel,” says first author Dario Rangel Shaw. “It challenges the long-held view that these systems were exclusive to specific microbial groups.” 

The team also identified unusually large cytochromes, including one with a record-breaking 86 heme-binding motifs, which could enable exceptional electron transfer and storage capacity. Tests showed that the bacterium could channel electrons directly to electrodes and natural iron minerals, achieving current densities comparable to the model species Geobacter sulfurreducens. 

By extending their analysis to publicly available genomes, the researchers identified more than 40 Desulfobacterota species carrying similar multipathway systems across diverse environments, from sediments and soils to wastewater and hydrothermal vents. 

“This reveals an unrecognized versatility in microbial respiration,” explains Krishna Katuri, co-author of the study. “Microbes with multiple electron transfer routes may gain a competitive advantage by tapping into a wider range of electron acceptors in nature.” 

The implications go well beyond ecology. Harnessing bacteria that can employ multiple electron transfer strategies could accelerate innovations in bioremediation, wastewater treatment, bioenergy production, and bioelectronics. For instance, electroactive biofilms like those formed by D. acetexigens could help recover energy from waste streams while simultaneously treating pollutants. 

“Our findings expand the known diversity of electron transfer proteins and highlight untapped microbial resources,” adds Pascal Saikaly, who led the study. “This opens the door to designing more efficient microbial systems for sustainable biotechnologies.” 

As researchers delve deeper into the microbial world, the discovery that a single bacterium can use multiple pathways underscores how much remains to be explored and how these hidden strategies could power a cleaner, more sustainable future. 

 

In the urgent search to find scalable, science-based solutions to the global coral reef crisis, there is a demand for robust ways to test these interventions that bridge the gap between laboratory and field experiments. In 2021, this prompted an international team of scientists, led by KAUST researchers, to establish a functional underwater research laboratory on a natural coral reef in the Red Sea that could provide a space to trial coral adaptation options.

Called the Coral Probiotics Village (CPV), this facility enables scientists to test and monitor the success of administering probiotics for corals in a real-world reef environment, among other innovative solutions to restore coral reefs. The first results from projects conducted at the CPV show glimmers of hope for future reef conservation efforts.

“Coral reefs are declining at alarming rates, and the mass coral bleaching event in 2024 had devastating effects worldwide,” says Neus Garcias-Bonet at KAUST, who was involved in developing the CPV with KAUST colleagues. “The CPV provides the perfect capabilities and closely monitoring frameworks to test probiotics and other coral restoration tools under real ocean conditions.”

Coral probiotics boost the corals’ own natural symbiotic microbes, or ‘good bacteria’, to help them remain resilient and healthy in the face of warming oceans. Coral probiotics have gained traction in recent years and show promise in laboratory trials. However, testing this solution on actual ocean reefs remained challenging.

The team presented the design, establishment and full scientific validation of the CPV in a paper published in Ecology and Evolution in 2025, offering a blueprint for other, similar underwater laboratories to be built across the world^[1]. “We believe that the CPV provides a reproducible model for testing of integrated reef restoration,” says Garcias-Bonet.

For the CPV, the researchers designed and built a diverse and continuous surveillance platform capable of tracking underwater conditions and thermal trends across different years, so that probiotics can be administered quickly and effectively. They are also developing integrated underwater sensor networks and AI-assisted reef monitoring, together with autonomous vehicles and technologies, in order to gather robust data during all projects conducted at the CPV.

The first projects conducted at the CPV – led by KAUST’s coral probiotics expert Raquel Peixoto – expanded initial successful lab trials on coral probiotics out into the reef.

“We were delighted with the successful completion of the first field trials of coral probiotics at the CPV,” says Peixoto. “These trials demonstrated that beneficial microbes can be safely incorporated by corals, improving their health and resilience without causing harm to other reef organisms or the surrounding environment. Remarkably, we also observed that treated corals helped protect nearby reef life, suggesting potential for broader ecosystem-level benefits.”

These results position the CPV as a scientifically robust platform for advancing reef restoration and conservation, notes Peixoto. As the laboratory is clearly mapped and well signposted, with named streets and zones, it also serves as an excellent tool for outreach and education.

“We envision the CPV as a long-term, multi-disciplinary research hub that enables the rigorous testing and refinement of microbial therapies and other advanced coral reef-assisted restoration-guided technologies,” says Garcias-Bonet. “The CPV offers a pathway to accelerate the development, validation, and deployment of interventions at meaningful ecological scales.”

 

Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries have long dominated the market for portable electronics, electric vehicles, and grid energy storage. A new generation of batteries using aqueous electrolytes offers compelling advantages for large-scale applications, including lower cost, improved safety, and environmental sustainability. However, parasitic chemical reactions continue to limit their cycle life.

To better understand these limitations, researchers at KAUST are developing advanced analytical tools to precisely identify the root causes of chemical degradation in aqueous batteries^[1].

“Even in established battery chemistry, there are still mysteries to solve. By applying new investigative tools, we can uncover hidden mechanisms that determine battery performance,” says Yunpei Zhu, the lead author of the study. “Understanding the ‘why’ behind these processes lays the foundation to designing cheaper, safer, and longer-lasting batteries.”

A typical rechargeable battery includes a liquid electrolyte into which positively charged ions of a metal, such as lithium, sodium, or zinc, are dissolved. When the battery is charged, the ions capture electrons from the surface of an electrode — a process called reduction — and the metal is deposited onto the electrode in its solid form. During discharging, the reverse chemical reaction — oxidation — returns the metal back into solvated ions in the electrolyte.

One factor affecting the lifetime of a battery is the shape and texture of the solid metal electrodeposited on the electrode. For example, needle-like structures can grow on the electrode surface. These dendrites reduce the amount of useful metal, short circuit the battery, causing failure, overheating, or a fire, which represents a major safety concern.

Zhu and his KAUST co-workers investigated these parasitic reactions using a combination of advanced nuclear magnetic resonance, electron microscopy, ultrafast electrochemical experiments, and simulations. Taking zinc as a model metal, they tested five different zinc salts in a water-based, or aqueous, electrolyte: zinc sulfate, zinc perchlorate, zinc chloride, zinc triflate, and zinc bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide. Each salt uses a different type of negatively charged ion, or anion, in the reaction.

Their analysis indicated that low reversibility in batteries arises from the free water molecules in the aqueous electrolyte, but that these could be reduced by the correct choice of anion. “We used our advanced techniques to watch, at the molecular level, how water molecules behave in battery electrolytes,” explains Zhu. “By comparing different salts, we discovered that certain ions can ‘calm’ the motion of water molecules — and this subtle control greatly improves the performance and lifespan of metal anodes in aqueous batteries.”

Specifically, the sulfate ions performed best and batteries using zinc sulfate achieved very high reversibility and stability, and the zinc anode lasted much longer than those in the other electrolytes.

“This work is representative of our core focus and efforts in innovative energy technologies at KAUST’s Center for Renewable Energy and Storage Technologies (CREST),” says Husam Alshareef, who led the group. “Our next goal is to scale up this chemistry into larger battery systems suitable for grid-scale energy storage — particularly for renewable energy in Saudi Arabia.”

 

Artificial vision systems that combine image sensing, memory, and processing in one compact platform are a step closer to real-world application following a major advancement led by researchers at KAUST. The team has developed high-performance, light-controlled memory devices, or photonic memristors, that mark a significant step toward energy-efficient, integrated ‘smart vision’ hardware^[1].

Memristors exhibit a resistance that varies with applied current flow and retain this resistance even when the current is turned off. Their ability to remember resistance based on past current flow enables memory and computation in one component, which is essential for data storage and neuromorphic computing. They display two distinct brain-like resistive switching modes: non-volatile and volatile modes, mimicking long-term and short-term memory, respectively.

Typically, memristors comprise metal-oxide thin films that respond to electrical stimuli but have several manufacturing challenges and performance limitations. Photonic memristors use light, a low-power, non-destructive, and contactless stimulus, to trigger switching, which provides a fast and energy-efficient alternative to conventional devices. The devices that contain atomically-thin two-dimensional materials, such as hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), feature excellent thermal stability, mechanical flexibility, and transparency. However, they are limited to narrow wavelength ranges and work in a single mode.

To harness hBN’s exceptional thermal stability and silicon’s light-absorption capabilities, an international team led by Maolin Chen, Xixiang Zhang, and with co-workers from KAUST have created photonic memristors by combining both materials in a layered arrangement.

The researchers produced uniform nanocrystalline hBN films using a low-temperature process called plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition to ensure compatibility with existing silicon-based manufacturing. They incorporated the films into memristor arrays on four-inch wafers, which is consistent with the scalability of the devices to industrial applications.

“Our memristors enable ‘all-in-one’ vision chips: they include image sensing, data storage, and parallel processing,” Chen says. In addition to high memory stability and durability, the devices exhibit a switching ratio exceeding one billion.

The memristors dynamically change their resistive switching behavior when exposed to different light conditions. They respond to a wide wavelength range from ultraviolet to near-infrared light, indicating compatibility with broadband operation.

They also achieve on-demand reconfigurability between memory modes using light intensity. They do not show any resistive switching in the dark but change from volatile to non-volatile modes when light intensity increases.

“Volatile and non-volatile switching mimics neuroplasticity, such as short-term adaptation versus long-term memory,” Chen says. This multi-mode behavior emulates how human visual neurons respond to stimuli of varying strength, which is crucial for artificial vision systems operating in dynamic environments.

The light-induced change arises from interactions between photogenerated electrons from the silicon layer and hydrogen ions migrating within the hBN layer. These interactions create tiny conductive paths, or filaments, which sets the resistance state. These filaments also form, persist, or vanish depending on how light interacts with the materials.

The researchers discovered that the filaments originate from the ionization of airborne water molecules under applied voltage. The electric fields dissociate the water molecules at the grain boundaries of hBN to yield the migrating hydrogen ions, Chen explains.

The team is working on scaling down devices for higher-density integration, implementing three-dimensional stacking for ultra-compact neuromorphic hardware, and testing in-memory computing for real-time AI vision tasks.

 

With the decline of coral reefs well-documented, there is now evidence of heat tolerance being conferred in a common reef-building coral. This finding is helping scientists to understand if, and how, corals may be adapting naturally to rising ocean temperatures driven by global warming.

An international team has demonstrated that heritable genetic variation for heat tolerance is more widespread than previously thought in the reef-building coral Platygyra daedalea^[1]. The pressure of more regular marine heatwaves appears to be enhancing the selection of gene variants to help the coral to withstand higher temperatures.

“We urgently need to understand whether corals can adapt quickly enough to keep pace with climate change and, if so, how they might do this,” says Manuel Aranda from KAUST, who led the project alongside Emily Howells from Southern Cross University in Australia. “This knowledge is essential to guide conservation strategies and prioritize interventions in coral reefs while there is still time to act.”

P. daedalea is broadly distributed across the Indo-Pacific, including in the Red Sea and Arabian Gulf, which are among the world’s hottest reef environments. This makes it an ideal coral to study both for adaptation to extreme heat and for the potential for gene flow between populations.

In this ambitious project, the team combined large-scale quantitative breeding experiments across ten populations of P. daedalea, collected from six ocean regions.

“The greatest challenge was logistical, conducting controlled coral breeding and heat-stress experiments across multiple locations,” explains Aranda. “This coral species spawns only once a year for just a few nights, so our teams needed to be in the right place at the right time, often under challenging field conditions.”

The proximity of KAUST to the Red Sea allowed the scientists to collect and breed corals from populations known for their thermal tolerance.

“This breadth of sampling allowed us to directly assess heritable variation in heat tolerance at local and global scales,” notes Aranda. “Understanding the limits of coral heat tolerance, and the genetic basis of that tolerance, also tells us whether corals retain sufficient genetic variation to continue adapting in the future.”

The team subjected the coral to water of different temperatures in the lab, and monitored the resulting survival and settlement of coral larvae. They used specific breeding designs that allowed for trait selection, and genomic analyses to disentangle genetic from environmental effects. The results indicate that some coral populations possess heritable variation in heat tolerance, shaped by the history of heatwave exposure in each region.

According to Aranda, this suggests that corals are already adapting to warming oceans. “However, this adaptive potential is being depleted in the most thermally extreme environments, which may limit future adaptation. This finding is crucial because it highlights both hope and urgency for conservation actions,” he adds.

Aranda urges caution when it comes to engineering corals, because heat tolerance is a finely balanced trait that involves many genes. Conservation strategies should instead focus on preserving genetic diversity in reefs to maintain their evolutionary potential. The team suggests it may one day be possible to boost reef systems with naturally heat-tolerant genotypes.

In the next phase of the project, the researchers will apply high-throughput genotyping (ezRAD sequencing) to link genetic variation with thermal tolerance. This will allow them to determine how heat tolerance genes are passed down through generations, and to identify the genetic markers under selection.

 

A new machine-learning tool that classifies lab-grown embryo models with exceptional speed and accuracy offers a solution to one of the most pressing problems in developmental biology: how to reliably analyze vast numbers of stem-cell–derived structures known as blastoids, that mimic early human embryos, without relying on slow and subjective human inspection.

The KAUST-developed system, known as deepBlastoid, uses deep learning to sort these structures by morphology in a fraction of the time it would take trained embryologists, with performance that rivals, even surpasses, expert judgment^[1]. In benchmark testing, it proved highly adept at classifying early developmental structures, opening new possibilities for high-throughput profiling and uncovering subtle biological effects that might otherwise be missed.

“AI tools like deepBlastoid could reshape how we study the earliest stages of life,” says Zejun Fan, a Ph.D. student who helped develop the tool. “They enable researchers to run larger, more complex experiments, screen new drugs more efficiently, and study rare developmental events with greater precision. This could accelerate discoveries in infertility treatment, toxicology, and synthetic embryo modeling.”

To build deepBlastoid, the team — led by stem-cell biologist Mo Li and computer scientist Peter Wonka — trained an AI tool to recognize patterns in around 1,800 microscope images of blastoids. Each image had been sorted by experts into one of five categories corresponding to the quality of the blastoids; these ranged from well-formed structures with clear inner cell clusters and fluid-filled cavities, to misshapen ones and empty wells.

The researchers found AI learned to match the expert labels with 87 percent accuracy. When the team added a step that sent uncertain cases to human reviewers, the accuracy jumped to 97 percent.

The team benchmarked the tool’s performance against three expert annotators in a head-to-head test. In only 20 minutes, the AI processed thousands of images — around 1,000 times faster than human experts — while matching or even surpassing their accuracy.

To showcase its utility, the team applied deepBlastoid to two real-world use cases. First, they exposed blastoids to a gradient of lysophosphatidic acid (LPA), a signaling molecule known to influence early development. The model detected the expected increases in overall cavitation — the formation of fluid-filled cavities — but also revealed a previously overlooked surge in a specific quality class of blastoids at low LPA concentrations.

Second, they examined the effects of dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), a common solvent in drug screening. While the overall morphology appeared unaffected, deepBlastoid pinpointed subtle shifts in blastoid class frequencies, hinting at possible developmental impacts even at low doses.

“It’s a powerful assistant that improves overall efficiency and reliability,” says Li. “This opens the door to data-driven insights about how external factors influence embryo-like development.”

To encourage broader adoption, the team has made deepBlastoid freely available and open-source, allowing other labs to retrain the system with their own images or adapt it to different embryo models.

Fan notes that the field of developmental biology is only beginning to tap the full potential of artificial intelligence. He hopes that tools like deepBlastoid, combined with community engagement and standardized imaging protocols, will lower technical barriers and speed up scientific discovery.

“The main hurdles to adoption are integration into existing lab workflows, the need for high-quality training datasets, and ensuring trust and interpretability of AI decisions in sensitive biological contexts,” he says. “Overcoming these challenges will be crucial to ensure responsible and effective deployment of such technologies.”

 

Deep within the world’s oceans lurk marine bacteria armed with plastic-munching enzymes, their evolution seemingly sculpted by our synthetic castaways.

A global survey of oceanic life from researchers at KAUST shows that these microbial recyclers are not only widespread, but genetically primed to feast on polyethylene terephthalate (PET), the durable polymer found in everything from soda bottles to clothing^[1].

Their secret weapon is a telltale structural stamp on the PET hydrolase enzyme, known as PETase: the M5 motif.

“The M5 motif acts like a fingerprint that tells us when a PETase is likely to be functional, able to break down PET plastic,” explains Carlos Duarte, a marine ecologist and co-leader of the study. “Its discovery helps us understand how these enzymes evolved from other hydrocarbon-degrading enzymes,” he says. “In the ocean, where carbon is scarce, microbes seem to have fine-tuned these enzymes to make use of this new, human-made carbon source: plastic.”

PET was long deemed practically indestructible in nature. Hopes for biodegradation stirred in 2016, when scientists discovered a bacterium thriving on plastic waste in a Japanese recycling plant. It had evolved an enzyme — a PETase — capable of breaking down the plastic into its constituent parts.

But whether similar enzymes had evolved in the sea remained an open question.

Using a combination of AI-based structural modeling, large-scale genetic screening, and lab experiments, Duarte and his colleagues show that the M5 motif separates bona-fide PET-eaters from biochemical look-alikes. Marine bacteria carrying the full motif shredded PET in lab experiments. Snapshots of gene activity confirmed that M5-PETase genes are vigorously expressed in the world’s oceans, especially in waters riddled with plastic.

To chart the global spread of these enzymes, the team analyzed more than 400 ocean samples from across the seven seas, finding functional versions with the M5 motif in nearly 80 percent of the waters tested — from rubbish-rich surface gyres to nutrient-starved depths two kilometers down. In the latter, the ability to snack on synthetic carbon may confer a crucial survival advantage, according to Intikhab Alam, a senior bioinformatics researcher who co-led the study.

Ecologically, the rise of these enzymes signals an early microbial response to humanity’s planetary littering.

Duarte warns that nature’s cleanup crew works far too slowly to rescue the seas. “By the time plastics reach the deep sea, the risks to marine life and human consumers have already been inflicted,” he says.

On land, however, the discovery could fast-track industrial enzyme design for closed-loop recycling. “The range of PET-degrading enzymes spontaneously evolved in the deep sea provides models to be optimized in the lab for use in efficiently degrading plastics in treatment plants and, eventually, at home,” Duarte notes.

To that end, the M5 motif now offers the blueprint, pinpointing the structural tweaks that matter in real-world conditions, not just in a test tube. If scientists can harness those tweaks, then — as the world gropes for ways to tidy its plastic mess — they may find unlikely allies in the abyss: bacteria that already turn waste into lunch.

 

A naturally occurring polymer commonly used as a medical anticoagulant can improve the stability, flexibility and efficiency of next-generation perovskite solar cells, KAUST researchers have discovered^[1]. The polymer acts as a molecular bridge between two crucial layers within the solar cell, easing the flow of electrical charge and helping to make the devices more robust.

Perovskites are a family of light-harvesting semiconductors based on abundant, inexpensive materials such as lead and iodine. While most commercial solar cells rely on relatively thick slabs of crystalline silicon, perovskite solar cells have a much thinner light-absorbing layer, enabling lightweight and flexible devices. The efficiency of perovskite solar cells has soared over the past 15 years, with the best cells converting 27 percent of the light that falls on them into electricity, similar to the most efficient silicon cells.

However, perovskite cells also tend to degrade much more rapidly than silicon cells, partly due to problems at the interfaces between layers inside the perovskite cells, which can reduce efficiency and make the cells more fragile.

When light hits a solar cell, it frees electrons in the absorbing layer, which move into an adjacent electron transport layer, made of materials such as tin oxide, and onwards to an electrode. Weak binding between these layers can reduce the mechanical strength of the device, while defects at interfaces can trigger perovskite decomposition and significantly reduce the cell’s efficiency.

Other researchers have previously used small molecules to address these interface problems. “But small molecules usually cannot provide the structural integrity and high mechanical stability and flexibility that polymers like heparin sodium can offer,” explains Omar F. Mohammed, who led the research at KAUST.

Doctors use heparin sodium to prevent blood clots from forming in patients, but this sugar-based polymer has value in other contexts as well. One advantage is that it bristles with negatively charged chemical groups — carboxylates and sulfonates — alongside positively charged sodium ions.

The researchers inserted a thin film of heparin sodium, just 3–5 nanometers thick, between the perovskite and tin oxide layers in a solar cell. Tests showed that heparin’s carboxylate and sulfonate groups effectively passivated interfacial defects by compensating for missing iodine atoms, while its sodium did the same for missing lead.

Heparin’s chemical groups also formed robust bonds with lead and tin, binding the two layers together. “Its role as a molecular bridge is critical for both stability and flexibility in practical applications,” says Yafeng Xu, part of the KAUST team.

A perovskite solar cell containing heparin sodium boasted an impressive power-conversion efficiency of 26.61 percent, whereas an equivalent that lacked heparin could only manage 25.23 percent. The heparin device could be flexed 1,000 times without losing much efficiency. It was also more stable, retaining about 95 percent of its original output after 1,800 hours of operation, even when exposed to a temperature of 85°C. In contrast, the device without heparin lost roughly 30 percent of its efficiency under the same conditions.

The researchers now hope to apply these insights to improve the performance of larger perovskite solar cells.

 

Mass gatherings, such as major sports events and festivals, bring together people from different regions and countries. One associated risk of such large gatherings is the potential spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), a growing threat that undermines the effectiveness of treatments for infectious diseases.

However, it is a threat hard to assess due to the lack of a suitable baseline. The COVID-19 pandemic border closures provided an opportunity to establish a baseline level for antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs) and show the impact of mass gatherings once travel resumed.

A study, led by Changzhi Wang, a Ph.D. student in Pei-Ying Hong’s group at KAUST, indicates that mass gatherings contribute to the spread of specific ARGs into local wastewater systems^[1].

The presence of ARGs in wastewater is a potential cause of concern in Saudi Arabia. In its many rural areas, wastewater is collected in septic tanks that may be leaking into the surrounding environment, rather than being treated in centralized facilities.

The researchers sampled wastewater from four wastewater treatment plants that usually received untreated sewage from mass gatherings, as well as the local community. They also obtained sewage samples from a control plant that does not receive any wastewater from mass gatherings. Sampling was carried out between July 2020 and August 2022, after borders were reopened.

Using metagenomic analysis, the researchers investigated the relative abundance of ARGs, focusing on those conferring resistance to beta-lactam antibiotics, specifically metallo-beta-lactamase (MBL) and extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL).

“We observed MBL/ESBL families in specific periods that were associated with mass gatherings,” says Wang.

“This is represented by a corresponding increase in the number of meropenem and ceftazidime-resistant colonies recovered from the sewage in the four treatment plants after the mass gatherings in 2022,” he explains.

In contrast, at the control plant, the researchers could not isolate any of these meropenem or ceftazidime-resistant colonies.

“We also detected a beta-lactamase gene (bla_PER) in pathogenic bacteria during the peak period of mass gatherings, which reinforces the evidence that these gatherings could introduce new antimicrobial resistance genes to the local community,” Wang concludes.

Their findings have implications for monitoring AMR. They suggest that relying solely on the relative abundance of total ARGs may overlook key human-driven changes in resistance patterns.

The researchers conclude that adopting metagenomics as a surveillance approach, combined with bioinformatic analysis of specific ARGs, may more effectively reveal how mass gatherings contribute to the spread of AMR.

Hong believes the insights are crucial for informing public health strategies to ensure better preparedness and response to the spread of AMR during mass events.

“Based on our findings, wastewater/water surveillance could be an appropriate tool to monitor for a broad spectrum of microbial targets,” she says. “The findings highlight the risk posed by untreated wastewater and suboptimal wastewater treatment infrastructure.”

Hong explains that the study also highlighted the need for integration of omics-based approaches with cultivation-based monitoring methods to more effectively assess and mitigate AMR risks.

“These insights are crucial for informing public health strategies and interventions, ensuring better preparedness and response to the spread of antimicrobial resistance during mass gatherings,” she concludes.