No abstract

Microbial indicators are often used as alternative indicators of microbial safety in water. However, information regarding the correlation between microbial indicators and ecotoxicological factors such as potential pathogens and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in anthropogenically impacted waters remains highly limited. Combining 16S rRNA and metagenomic sequencing data, we investigated the composition of bacterial community and potential pathogens, ARGs diversity, ARGs host and horizontal gene transfer (HGT) potential in water samples under the influence of different exogenous pollutants in Chaohu Lake basin. The water body that receives a large amount of domestic sewage showed a significant decrease in microbial diversity and a significant enrichment of potential pathogens. A total of 14 main types and 461 subtypes of ARGs were detected in all samples, dominated by multidrug resistance (MDR) efflux pump (53.6%), aminoglycoside (6.0%), fluoroquinolone (5.8%) and polymyxin (5.46%). Host-tracking analysis showed that Escherichia coli and Bacteroides graminisolvens carried a wealth of ARG subtypes. Correlation analysis showed that potential pathogens and some ARG subtypes such as dfrE, sul2, PmrE exhibits significant correlation with indicator bacteria. Overall, next-generation sequencing (NGS) has the ability to conduct preliminary surveys of environmental samples to access potential health risks, thus providing ideas for water resources management.