Antibiotic resistance genes occurrence and bacterial community composition in the Liuxi River

Abstract

Antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in the environment have paid great concern due to their health risk. We investigated antibiotics concentrations (tetracyclines, sulfonamides, and fluoroquinolones), ARGs abundances (tetracycline, sulfonamide, and plasmid-mediated quinolone resistance (PMQR) genes), and bacterial community composition in sediment and water samples in the Liuxi River, China. Antibiotics concentrations were determined by ultra-performance liquid chromatography-electrospray tandem mass spectrometry. ARGs abundances were quantified by a culture-independent method. Bacterial community composition was analyzed by metagenomic approach based on Ion Torrent Personal Genome Machine platform. Antibiotics concentrations were at the levels of 1.19-622 ug kg −1 in sediment samples and below the limit of detection to 127 ng L −1 in water samples. Relative abundances (ARGs copies/16S rRNA gene copies) of detected ARGs were at the range of 10 −5 to 10 −2 . The dominant phyla were Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, and Verrucomicrobia in sediment samples, and were Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, and Bacteroidetes in water samples. The results indicated that the river environment was contaminated by antibiotics and may be as a reservoir of ARGs. This study provided quantitative data on antibiotics, ARGs and bacterial community composition in the Liuxi River, a geographical location different from the reported studies.

Antibiotics and antibiotic resistance genes in global lakes: A review and meta-analysis

“…Geneva (Czekalski et al 2012) were detected at 10 -3 to 10 -2 copies per 16S rRNA level. These levels are higher than those from Bosten Lake (10 -5 to 10 -3 copies per 16S rRNA) (Zhou et al 2014) and similar to those from the Liuxi River (Xiong et al 2014). The abundance of the tetA gene reached upwards of 10 6 copies per mL in Lake Maggiore (Di Cesare et al 2015) and 10 5 copies per mL in Taihu Lake (Zhang et al 2009c).…”

Impacts of addition of natural zeolite or a nitrification inhibitor on antibiotic resistance genes during sludge composting

“…Indeed, the evolution of the bacterial community was the main driver for the changes in ARGs rather than HGT induced by MGEs or co-selection/cooccurrence determined by MRGs. The dominant contribution of the bacterial community to ARG profiles has been elucidated in various environments, including soils (Forsberg et al, 2014), rivers (Czekalski et al, 2014), WWTPs (Yang et al, 2014) and others (Xiong et al, 2014(Xiong et al, , 2015a(Xiong et al, , 2015bUdikovic-Kolic et al, 2014). Nevertheless, the less frequent HGT incidents should not be overlooked, as even one HGT event into a human pathogen has the potential for great harm (Berendonk et al, 2015).…”

Antibiotic resistance genes in agriculture and urban influenced watersheds in southwestern British Columbia

“…Regardless of the gene donor, these horizontal gene transfer elements enable genes to move from one bacterial cell to another and from one genomic system to another [18]. The role of elements such as phages and integrons in the spread of resistance appears to be significant in freshwater ecosystems [20] and has been well documented using culture-independent approaches [21][22][23][24]. In this context, several metagenomic studies have been conducted in aquatic ecosystems analyzing the resistome of microbial communities from sediments, WWTPs and effluents [25][26][27][28].…”