Marine Sediment Bacteria Harbor Antibiotic Resistance Genes Highly Similar to Those Found in Human Pathogens

Abstract

The ocean is a natural habitat for antibiotic-producing bacteria, and marine aquaculture introduces antibiotics into the ocean to treat infections and improve aquaculture production. Studies have shown that the ocean is an important reservoir of antibiotic resistance genes. However, there is a lack of understanding and knowledge about the clinical importance of the ocean resistome. We investigated the relationship between the ocean bacterial resistome and pathogenic resistome. We applied high-throughput sequencing and metagenomic analyses to explore the resistance genes in bacterial plasmids from marine sediments. Numerous putative resistance determinants were detected among the resistance genes in the sediment bacteria. We also found that several contigs shared high identity with transposons or plasmids from human pathogens, indicating that the sediment bacteria recently contributed or acquired resistance genes from pathogens. Marine sediment bacteria could play an important role in the global exchange of antibiotic resistance.

The Rising Tide of Antimicrobial Resistance in Aquaculture: Sources, Sinks and Solutions

“…Detection of numerous, globally distributed, AMR genes in aquatic sediments have recently reported [32,36,68,69,70]. Various AMR genes have been documented to be present in aquatic sediment, such as sul 1 , sul 2 , tetB, tetC, tetM, tetO, tetW, qnrA, aadA, bla TEM , bla SHV , bla CTX-M , and bla NDM [59,71,72,73]. Moreover, Yang et al [73] examined marine sediment, and found numerous tetracycline resistance genes (mentioned above).…”

“…Various AMR genes have been documented to be present in aquatic sediment, such as sul 1 , sul 2 , tetB, tetC, tetM, tetO, tetW, qnrA, aadA, bla TEM , bla SHV , bla CTX-M , and bla NDM [59,71,72,73]. Moreover, Yang et al [73] examined marine sediment, and found numerous tetracycline resistance genes (mentioned above). More importantly, several contigs sharing high identity with transposons or plasmids from human pathogens were detected, indicating that the sediment bacteria recently contributed or acquired resistance genes from pathogens [73].…”

Sponge Microbiota Are a Reservoir of Functional Antibiotic Resistance Genes

“…It has been shown that AR is a natural phenomenon that predates the modern selective pressure of clinical antibiotic use (D'Costa et al, 2011), although little is known about the exact roles of these genes in their native environments (Sengupta et al, 2013). The marine environment is a major genetic reservoir of AR, which despite its tremendous bacterial diversity has been little studied in the context of AR gene dissemination (Yang et al, 2013). A recent study has identified a range of unclassified resistance genes in ocean water, thereby highlighting its importance as an environmental reservoir (Hatosy and Martiny, 2015).…”

Antibiotic Resistance Case Study: Enterobacteriaceae isolated from Batlama Creek in Giresun, Turkey

“…Several recent studies demonstrate that uncontrolled use of antibiotics contributes to the increasing level of antibiotic resistance among the pathogenic bacteria in water ecosystems (Shah et al, 2014). Additionally, antimicrobial resistance is increasingly compromising the treatment of many infections that were until recently, controllable, and so remain the most common diseases in the world (Yang et al, 2013). Currently in different parts of the world most studies (Reinthaler et al, 2003;Ahmed et al, 2008) on antibiotic resistance in aquatic habitat have concerned bacteria of Enterobacteriaceae, which is thought to be associated with infectious diseases (Liu et al, 2015).…”