Distribution of antibiotic resistance genes in an agriculturally disturbed lake in China: Their links with microbial communities, antibiotics, and water quality

Extracellular DNA (eDNA): Neglected and Potential Sources of Antibiotic Resistant Genes (ARGs) in the Aquatic Environments

“…The sediments, as well as the water column, were found to have significant sources of organic carbon, phosphorus and nitrogen. Recently Wang et al, 2020, reported that eutrophic water (high N and P content) was found to be suitable for the propagation of ARGs [ 54 ]. Therefore, it is important to have a desirable quantity and quality of eDNA concentration for quantitative real-time (qPCR), NGS and also bioinformatic analysis, which may influence the diversity and abundance of eARGs in environmental matrices.…”

“…Water is considered as an important channel and carrier of ARB and ARGs in the environment [ 67 , 68 ] and led to aquatic environments becoming persistent ARG reservoirs [ 9 ]. Many studies that have been conducted in aquatic environments suggest that abiotic factors, for example, pH [ 69 ], temperature [ 70 , 71 ], salinity [ 61 , 68 , 72 ], organic carbon [ 4 ], heavy metal contents on the co-selection of antibiotic resistance [ 73 , 74 ], antibiotic concentration [ 75 , 76 ], nutrients such as P and N [ 54 ], dissolved oxygen [ 54 ] and climatic factors such as rainfall [ 77 ] and seasonality [ 19 ] can affect the abundance of ARGs along with microbial communities in the environment. Indeed, the presence of various stressors like antibiotics and heavy metals may influence the eARGs transformation to susceptible bacteria in the environment by one of the natural-mechanism processes, so-called horizontal gene transformation (HGT).…”

A multi-omics study on quantifying antimicrobial resistance in European freshwater lakes

“…Nevertheless, our methodology and data will be valuable as a reference to track the temporal development of AMR in Europe, and comparisons for those studied from countries of other continents. Our standardized approach contrasts from studies that already identified significant accumulation of AMR from lakes ( Chakraborty et al, 2020 , Kong et al, 2021 , Ram and Kumar, 2020 , Wang et al, 2020 ) and could avoid conditions, for instance, present in China and India, where, albeit governmental actions have been already taken, the environment is highly suffering from a mis- and overuse of antibiotics ( Kakkar et al, 2017 , Qu et al, 2019 ). One limitation in our current study is concerning the chromosomal and non-chromosomal elements such as plasmids, as the AMR genes are not necessarily vertically inherited, and the 16 s rRNA survey, therefore, most likely yields an incomplete list of AMR-related genera.…”

“…Most notably, restricted antibiotics, such as colistin and third- and fourth-generation cephalosporins, are widely applied in poultry farming ( European Union Summary Report on antimicrobial resistance, 2013 ). Wang et al (2020) even conclude that reducing antibiotic contamination and eutrophication reduces the risk of AMR ( Wang et al, 2020 ).…”

New Estimation of Antibiotic Resistance Genes in Sediment Along the Haihe River and Bohai Bay in China: A Comparison Between Single and Successive DNA Extraction Methods

“…Bacterial communities were the main factor that directly affected the distribution of ARGs in the environment because ARGs consist of bacterial cells. Thus, the significant correlations between ARGs and bacterial communities suggested that the bacterial communities might be possible ARG hosts ( Wang et al, 2020 ). We found that the correlations between ARGs and bacterial communities were more robust in the total samples than in the E1 sample, indicating that their interactive relationships greatly improved ( Figure 8 ).…”