ARGfore: A multivariate framework for forecasting antibiotic resistance gene abundances using time-series metagenomic datasets

Background The global spread of antibiotic resistance presents a significant threat to human, animal, and plant health. Metagenomic sequencing is increasingly being utilized to profile antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in various environments, but presently a mechanism for predicting future trends in ARG occurrence patterns is lacking. Capability of forecasting ARG abundance trends could be extremely valuable towards informing policy and practice aimed at mitigating the evolution and spread of ARGs. Results Here we propose ARGfore, a multivariate forecasting model for predicting ARG abundances from time-series metagenomic data. ARGfore extracts features that capture inherent relationships among ARGs and is trained to recognize patterns in ARG trends and seasonality. Conclusion ARGfore outperformed standard time-series forecasting methods, such as N-HiTS, LSTM, and ARIMA, exhibiting the lowest mean absolute percentage error when applied to different wastewater datasets. Additionally, ARGfore demonstrated enhanced computational efficiency, making it a promising candidate for a variety of ARG surveillance applications. The rapid prediction of future trends can facilitate early detection and deployment of mitigation efforts if necessary. ARGfore is publicly available at https://github.com/joungmin-choi/ARGfore .