Is it necessary to obtain ethical clearance to analyze the genes of multidrug resistant microbes obtained from microbiology department of a hospital and publish it ?
I routinely use ATB resistant clincal isolates, and I would say it depends on the regulations in your area. It would not be the same ethics board application as for mice or rats, but the health and safety board at your institution may request you to fill out a strain transfer agreement so they know the inventory of your lab (which is what I have to do).
Whether the microbes are multi-drug resistant or not is not so much the issue. If the microbial isolates are clinical isolates that were collected from patients, and research is to be performed on the isolates, then the research should normally be reviewed by a human research ethics committee. For example, clinical isolates that were collected as part of routine microbiology laboratory diagnostics, may be studied in a downstream research project following appropriate ethics review and acquisition of approval.
In order to pursue research in this area you have to take permission from institutional bio-safety committee as well as from ethics committee as Dr. Sharma suggested. if you want to publish these results you must have an permission number for the same experiment approved by committee. hope this helps you.
it is basically depends on the regulations of the country that you working in
but for publication purposes, the ethical approval is not required for in vitro studies including all species of microorganisms. So far is not required by any journal
As a microbial isolate from a clinical sample, it is important to know the biosafety level of the particular isolate first, and if a lab is designed to handle and contain the microbes & biological agents of that biosafety level. In general, even in procuring or collecting microbes of biosafety lavel avobe 1, it requires institutional permission (head or institutional ethical committee) . If research is confined in within the genetic analysis of the isolate, then for publication purpose, you may not require a ethical clearance, but in these days, traceability matters a lot and the journal authority may want to know if this organism is identified/deposited, so that others may also use the isolate in future. Good luck.