Metagenomic insights for antimicrobial resistance surveillance in soils with different land uses in Brazil

Abstract

Anthropization in terrestrial environments commonly leads to land use transformation, changing soil properties and their microbial communities. This, combined with the exacerbated use of antibiotics in human and animal health promotes the expansion of the soil resistome. Considering the urgent need for surveillance of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), we aimed to evaluate how different land practices (urban, farming and forest) can affect the soil resistome and the dynamics of their bacterial communities. We collected eight soil samples from different locations in the countryside of Sao Paulo (Brazil), assessed the community profiles based on 16S rRNA sequencing and analyzed the soil metagenomes based on shotgun sequencing. Our results highlight differences in the communities' structure and their dynamics which were correlated with land practices. Additionally, differences were observed in the abundance and diversity of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) and virulence factors (VFs) across studied soils, where a higher presence and homogeneity of vanRO, mtrA and rbpA genes were detected in livestock soils. We observed that Staphylococcus and Bacillus are positively correlated with each other and are markers for agricultural communities. Moreover, the abundance and diversity of ARGs and VFs observed in farming soils raises concerns regarding the potential spread of these genes in the environment. Together, our findings reinforce the importance and urgency of AMR surveillance in the environment, especially in soils undergoing deep land use transformations due to anthropic activity.