HTGAA 2026: Individual Final Project Documentation AI-Driven Mining of Healthcare Wastewater Metagenomes for Novel Phage-Derived Antimicrobial Peptides Against Salmonella enterica SECTION 1: ABSTRACT The rapid rise of antimicrobial resistance has intensified the need for new antibacterial strategies that move beyond conventional antibiotic discovery pipelines. Healthcare-associated wastewater is a particularly relevant One Health environment because it can contain clinically important bacteria, antimicrobial residues, resistance-associated genes, and diverse bacteriophages. Within this context, bacteriophages represent a valuable but underexplored source of antimicrobial molecules, including endolysin-derived peptides, membrane-active regions, and proteins associated with bacterial envelope disruption. This project aims to develop an AI-guided synthetic biology workflow to identify bacteriophage-derived antimicrobial peptide candidates from healthcare wastewater metagenomes in Andean regions and prioritize them for predicted activity against Salmonella enterica.
