Urban lakes are impacted by heavy human activities and represent potential reservoirs for antibiotic resistance genes. In this study, six urban lakes in Wuhan, central China were selected to analyze the distribution of sulfonamide resistance (sul) genes, tetracycline resistance (tet) genes and quinolone resistance (qnr) genes and their relationship with heavy metals, antibiotics, lake morphology and anthropic impact. sul1 and sul2 were detected in all six lakes and dominated the types of antibiotic resistance genes, which accounted for 86.28-97.79% of the total antibiotic resistance gene abundance. For eight tested tet genes, antibiotic efflux pumps (tetA, tetB, tetC, and tetG) genes were all observed in six lakes and had higher relative abundance than ribosomal protection protein genes (tetM and tetQ). For 4 plasmid mediated quinolone resistance genes, only qnrD is found in all six lakes. The class I integron (intI1) is also found to be a very important media for antibiotic resistance gene propagation in urban lakes. The results of redundancy analysis and variation partitioning analysis showed that antibiotic and co-selection with heavy metals were the major factors driving the propagation of antibiotic resistance genes in six urban lakes. The heavily eutrophic Nanhu Lake and Shahu Lake which located in a high density building area with heavy human activities had the higher relative abundance of total antibiotic resistance genes. Our study could provide a useful reference for antibiotic resistance gene abundance in urban lakes with high anthropic impact.

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Sediment is an ideal medium for the aggregation and dissemination of antibiotics and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). The levels of antibiotics and ARGs in Honghu Lake and East Dongting Lake of central China were investigated in this study. The concentrations of eight antibiotics (four sulfonamides and four tetracyclines) in Honghu Lake were in the range 90.00-437.43 μg kg (dry weight (dw)) with mean value of 278.21 μg kg dw, which was significantly higher than those in East Dongting Lake (60.02-321.04 μg kg dw, mean value of 195.70 μg kg dw). Among the tested three sulfonamide resistance genes (sul) and eight tetracycline resistance genes (tet), sul1, sul2, tetA, tetC, and tetM had 100 % detection frequency in sediment samples of East Dongting Lake, while only sul1, sul2, and tetC were observed in all samples of Honghu Lake. The relative abundance of sul2 was higher than that of sul1 at p < 0.05 level in both lakes. The relative abundance of tet genes in East Dongting Lake was in the following order: tetM > tetB > tetC > tetA. The relative abundance of sul1, sul2, and tetC in East Dongting Lake was significantly higher than those in Honghu Lake. The abundance of background bacteria may play an important role in the horizontal spread of sul2 and tetC genes in Honghu Lake and sul1 in East Dongting Lake, respectively. Redundancy analysis indicated that tetracyclines may play a more important role than sulfonamides in the abundance of sul1, sul2, and tetC gens in Honghu Lake and East Dongting Lake.