“…In this respect, heavy metal resistance genes for mercury ( merACDTPR ), arsenic ( arsRBC ), nickel ( nikABCDE ), copper ( pcoABCDR , cusABCFRS , cueOR , cutA ), zinc ( znuABC , zntAR , zitB , zraR ), and silver ( silABCEFPS ) were identified in E. coli B2C strain. The presence of several heavy metal resistance genes in E. coli strain B2C seems unusual compared to other E. coli strains recovered from the environment ( Azam et al, 2018 ; Siddiqui et al, 2020 ). However, this difference could be due to the use of whole-genome sequencing, whereas most studies describe the detection of a few selected genes using PCR alone.…”