Homogeneous selection drives antibiotic resistome in two adjacent sub-watersheds, China

Anyi Hu; Hongjie Wang; Jiangwei Li; Sikandar I Mulla; Quanyi Qiu; Lina Tang; Azhar Rashid; Yang Wu; Qian Sun; Chang-Ping Yu

doi:10.1016/j.jhazmat.2020.122820

Homogeneous selection drives antibiotic resistome in two adjacent sub-watersheds, China

J Hazard Mater. 2020 Nov 5:398:122820. doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2020.122820. Epub 2020 May 23.

Authors

Anyi Hu¹, Hongjie Wang², Jiangwei Li³, Sikandar I Mulla⁴, Quanyi Qiu⁵, Lina Tang⁵, Azhar Rashid⁶, Yang Wu⁷, Qian Sun³, Chang-Ping Yu⁸

Affiliations

¹ CAS Key Laboratory of Urban Pollutant Conversion, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen, 361021, China. Electronic address: ayhu@iue.ac.cn.
² CAS Key Laboratory of Urban Pollutant Conversion, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen, 361021, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China.
³ CAS Key Laboratory of Urban Pollutant Conversion, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen, 361021, China.
⁴ CAS Key Laboratory of Urban Pollutant Conversion, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen, 361021, China; Department of Biochemistry, School of Applied Sciences, Reva University, Bangalore, 560 064, India.
⁵ Key Laboratory of Urban Environment and Health, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen, 361021, China.
⁶ CAS Key Laboratory of Urban Pollutant Conversion, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen, 361021, China; Nuclear Institute for Food and Agriculture, Tarnab, Peshawar, Pakistan.
⁷ Department of Biology and Environmental Engineering, Hefei University, Hefei 230601, China.
⁸ CAS Key Laboratory of Urban Pollutant Conversion, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen, 361021, China; Graduate Institute of Environmental Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei 106, Taiwan. Electronic address: cpyu@iue.ac.cn.

PMID: 32502801
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2020.122820

Abstract

Rivers are a significant reservoir of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs), yet the biogeographic pattern of riverine ARGs and its underlying driving forces remain poorly understood. Here, we used metagenomic approach to investigate the spatio-temporal variation of ARGs in two adjacent sub-watersheds viz. North River (NR) and West River (WR), China. The results demonstrated that Bacitracin (22.8 % of the total ARGs), multidrug (20.7 %), sulfonamide (15.2 %) and tetracycline (10.9 %) were the dominant ARG types. SourceTracker analysis indicated that sewage treatment plants as the main source of ARGs, while animal feces mainly contributed in spreading the ARGs in the upstream of NR. Random forest and network analyses confirmed that NR was under the influence of fecal pollution. PCoA analysis demonstrated that the composition of ARGs changed along with the anthropogenic gradients, while the Raup-Crick null model showed that homogenizing selection mediated by class 1 integron intI1 resulted in stable ARG communities at whole watershed scale. Structural equation models revealed that microbial community, grassland and several non-antibiotic micropollutants may also play certain roles in influencing the distribution of ARGs. Overall, the observed deterministic formation of ARGs in riverine systems calls effective management strategies to mitigate the risks of antibiotic resistance on public health.

Keywords: Antibiotic resistance genes; Class 1 integron intI1; Jiulong River; Micropollutants; SourceTracker.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Animals
Anti-Bacterial Agents* / pharmacology
China
Drug Resistance, Microbial / genetics
Genes, Bacterial*
Rivers

Substances

Anti-Bacterial Agents