BackgroundAntibiotic-resistant pathogens are challenging treatment of infections worldwide. Urban sewage is potentially a major conduit for dissemination of antibiotic resistance genes into various environmental compartments. However, the diversity and abundance of such genes in wastewater are not well known.MethodsHere, seasonal and geographical distributions of antibiotic resistance genes and their host bacterial communities from Chinese urban sewage were characterized, using metagenomic analyses and 16S rRNA gene-based Illumina sequencing, respectively.ResultsIn total, 381 different resistance genes were detected, and these genes were extensively shared across China, with no geographical clustering. Seasonal variation in abundance of resistance genes was observed, with average concentrations of 3.27 × 1011 and 1.79 × 1012 copies/L in summer and winter, respectively. Bacterial communities did not exhibit geographical clusters, but did show a significant distance-decay relationship (P < 0.01). The core, shared resistome accounted for 57.7% of the total resistance genes, and was significantly associated with the core microbial community (P < 0.01). The core human gut microbiota was also strongly associated with the shared resistome, demonstrating the potential contribution of human gut microbiota to the dissemination of resistance elements via sewage disposal.ConclusionsThis study provides a baseline for investigating environmental dissemination of resistance elements and raises the possibility of using the abundance of resistance genes in sewage as a tool for antibiotic stewardship.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40168-017-0298-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Struvite recovered from wastewater is a renewable source of phosphorus and nitrogen and can be used as fertilizer for plant growth. However, antibiotics and resistome can be enriched in the struvite derived from wastewater. Robust understanding of the potential risks after struvite application to soils has remained elusive. Here, we profiled antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) and mobile genetic elements (MGEs) in struvite, soil, rhizosphere and phyllosphere of Brassica using high-throughput quantitative PCR. A total of 165 ARGs and 10 MGEs were detected. Application of struvite was found to increase both the abundance and diversity of ARGs in soil, rhizosphere and phyllosphere. In addition, ARGs shared exclusively between Brassica phyllosphere and struvite were identified, indicating that struvite was an important source of ARGs found in phyllosphere. Furthermore, OTUs shared between rhizosphere and phyllosphere were found to significantly correlate with ARGs, suggesting that microbiota in leaf and root could interconnect and ARGs might transfer from struvite to the surface of plants via rhizosphere using bacteria as spreading medium. These findings demonstrated that struvite as an organic fertilizer can facilitate the spread of antibiotic resistance into human food chain and this environment-acquired antibiotic resistance should be put into human health risk assessment system.
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