Metagenomic insights into environmental risk of field microplastics in an urban river

Abstract

Microplastics (MPs) are emerging as anthropogenic vectors for the colonization and transportation of microbial communities in aquatic ecosystems. However, the composition of the microbiome and its environmental risk on field MPs at watershed scale has rarely been explored. Here, geographical distributions of microbiome, antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) and virulence factors (VFs) on field MPs at watershed scale were characterized and their potential environmental risks were evaluated based on the data from metagenomic analyzes. The succession of microbial communities on MPs was observed along the watershed, and some ARGs and VFs were significantly enriched on MPs in urban region in comparison with rural region. Potential environmental risk of MPs conducted by Projection Pursuit Regression model in midstream (peri-urban region) and downstream (urban region) were significantly higher than that in upstream (rural region), and exhibit close relationships with MPs concentration and water velocity. Furthermore, our source tracking results demonstrated that the microbiome, ARGs and VFs in urban region MPs were largely derived from rural region MPs. Our results caution us that special attention should be paid to the risks posed by MPs in urban water bodies, and highlight the threat of MPs from rural upstream areas.

Keywords: Antibiotic resistance genes; Environmental risk; Field microplastics; Microbiome; Virulence factors.