## 3 Results and Discussion
### Search for Resistance and Virulence Genes in Reference Genomes  
Since ancient times, fermentation has been used as a method of food preservation because it considerably reduces the presence of potentially pathogenic microorganisms. However, recent studies have revealed the presence of different types of microorganisms, especially pathogenic bacteria, in these foods. The fermentation process can represent a significant problem for the health of consumers because it keeps microorganisms nearby and favors different gene transfer mechanisms between them, increasing the abundance of these genes within the community [107]. With Gegenees software, version 3.1, organisms belonging to the BPP and BHMT groups were used to evaluate the genomic similarity between them and with reference 16S  
Figure 8: Heat map demonstrating the correlation between bacterial groups and the profile of volatile organic compounds. BPP: abundance of bacteria with pathogenic potential and BHMT: abundance of bacteria specific to milk technology. The bluish color shows positive brightness, whitish shows without brightness, and reddish shows negative brightness. The correlation test used was [PERSON]’s non-parametric test and the asterisk indicates a significance of 95% (\(p<0.05\)). rRNA from the NCBI database (Figure 9). When observing the heatmap, in general, one can notice more phylogenetically distant organisms, with the values marked closest to the red color. This profile was already expected due to the great diversity of genera selected for this investigation stage. However, some groups have attracted attention due to their high similarity. All sequences of the genes of the species identified in sheep's cheese showed high similarity with the reference genes (85 to 100%), except for _Pseudomonas weihenstephanensis_, which obtained 57% similarity. Thus, the similarity analysis suggests that our sequences present similarity at the genomic level with their respective reference genomes (classified by NCBI), confirming the classification of the taxa. Based on these, the complete genomes of the reference species result that showed high similarity with the species identified in the cheeses were used for subsequent genomic analyses. Complete reference genomes, obtained from NCBI databases, of the species identified in sheep's cheese, were analyzed in the PanVita software, version 1, and a clustermap of resistance and virulence genes was generated to qualitatively and quantitatively verify the presence of these genes (Figure 10). In general, the resistance genes (Figure 10A) detected in the analysis using the CARD database totaled 146 genes detected in 14 species, of which 83 were different genes, divided into 6 different types of mechanisms acting on the inhibitory compound, which were efflux (n = 60), inactivation (n = 8), alteration of the target of action (n = 8), reduction in permeability (n = 6), protection (n = 2), and replacement of the antibiotic target (n = 2). Three genes (marA, ParR, and ramA) have efflux and permeability reduction functions simultaneously. Figure 9: Similarity analysis between species from the BPP and BHMT groups present in sheep’s cheese with reference organisms. In the heatmap, the same organisms described horizontally in each of the numbers are also allocated vertically. The greenish coloration demonstrates high similarity (values close to 100% similarity), the orange coloration shows a medium similarity and a redder coloration demonstrates low similarity between the genomes (values close to 0% similarity). Figure 10: Clustermap of resistance and virulence genes from the BPP and BHMT groups generated by PanVita software. (**A**) Resistance and (**B**) virulence genes. On the right, horizontally, the complete genomes of species from the BPP and BHMT groups are listed. At the bottom of each graph, the abbreviations of the names of the resistance/vululence genes found in the analysis are described.