A new global database brings together information on disease-causing microorganisms, antibiotic resistance genes and virulence factors in coastal waters, giving researchers and public health professionals a practical tool to assess biological risks in estuaries and other coastal environments.
Coastal waters connect human communities, wildlife, sewage systems, and marine ecosystems, but information about their microbial hazards is often scattered across separate studies. The Coastal Water Pathogen Database was developed to allow these complex data to be easily examined, compared, and used for environmental and public health decision-making. ”
Lu Fan, corresponding author, Southern University of Science and Technology
Coastal areas are home to the majority of the world’s population and support fisheries, aquaculture, recreation, transportation, and tourism. However, pathogens can also enter these waters from domestic sewage, livestock wastewater, aquaculture, and other human activities. Rising water temperatures and changing rainfall patterns may further increase the movement and proliferation of some microorganisms, making effective monitoring increasingly important.
To address this challenge, the research team developed the Coastal Water Pathogen Database (CWPD), an open-access platform that integrates shotgun metagenomic sequence data from coastal environments. Unlike databases that primarily focus on individual bacterial species or aquaculture pathogens, CWPD covers pathogenic bacteria, viruses, and fungi, along with antibiotic resistance genes and virulence factors.
The current version includes data from 158 samples collected in six coastal areas on three continents, including the Pearl River Estuary, Cochin Estuary, Columbia River Estuary, Chesapeake Bay, Delaware Bay, and Baltic Sea. The samples span coastal conditions from low-salinity estuarine waters to seawater and cover the collection period from 2010 to 2019.
Across these samples, the researchers detected 361 pathogenic bacterial species, 42 pathogenic viral species, 287 antibiotic resistance gene subtypes in 30 classes, and 10 virulence factors. The platform’s underlying knowledge dictionary is even broader, including 1,904 pathogen entries, 2,373 antibiotic resistance genes, and 541 virulence factors.
CWPD displays information through interactive maps, word clouds, heat maps, and bar graphs. Users can explore the geographic distribution and abundance of specific pathogens and search by location, year, or biological risk category. This visual approach allows users to interpret complex metagenomic information without requiring them to directly manipulate large raw sequence datasets.
The platform also provides online analysis services for newly generated metagenomic data. Registered users can upload raw Illumina paired-end sequencing files. The system then performs quality control, sequence assembly, and annotation of microbial communities, pathogens, antibiotic resistance genes, and virulence factors. For a typical 10 gigabyte environmental metagenomic sample, complete analysis will take approximately 12 hours, and users will receive an email when results are ready.
The researchers designed the CWPD with a modular architecture and standardized application programming interface to allow future connectivity to ecological, clinical, and public health databases. The platform also aims to support the One Health approach, which recognizes that human health, animal health and environmental conditions are inextricably linked.
The authors caution that the current database is an early version and does not yet provide complete global coverage. The available samples are concentrated in a few well-studied coastal systems, so comparisons between regions or periods should be interpreted with caution. The researchers plan to update the database every six months and expand coverage to densely populated areas, industrialized coastlines, and underrepresented regions in Africa and South America.
By combining pathogen detection, antibiotic resistance information, geographic visualization, and online data analysis, CWPD provides the foundation for coastal ecosystem management, biological risk assessment, and future pandemic preparedness.
sauce:
Shenyang Agricultural University
Reference magazines:
Song, S. others. (2026). The Coastal Water Pathogen Database profiles pathogenic microorganisms in coastal environments. Biological contaminants. DOI: 10.48130/biocontam-0026-0006. https://www.maxapress.com/article/doi/10.48130/biocontam-0026-0006
