Correlations among Antibiotic Resistance Genes, Mobile Genetic Elements and Microbial Communities in Municipal Sewage Treatment Plants Revealed by High-Throughput Sequencing

Fuzheng Zhao; Bo Wang; Kailong Huang; Jinbao Yin; Xuechang Ren; Zhu Wang; Xu-Xiang Zhang

doi:10.3390/ijerph20043593

Correlations among Antibiotic Resistance Genes, Mobile Genetic Elements and Microbial Communities in Municipal Sewage Treatment Plants Revealed by High-Throughput Sequencing

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2023 Feb 17;20(4):3593. doi: 10.3390/ijerph20043593.

Authors

Fuzheng Zhao^{1

2

3}, Bo Wang², Kailong Huang³, Jinbao Yin³, Xuechang Ren², Zhu Wang⁴, Xu-Xiang Zhang³

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Yellow River Water Environment in Gansu Province, Lanzhou Jiaotong University, Lanzhou 730070, China.
² School of Environmental and Municipal Engineering, Lanzhou Jiaotong University, Lanzhou 730070, China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, School of the Environment, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China.
⁴ Institute of Environmental Research at Greater Bay, Key Laboratory for Water Quality and Conservation of the Pearl River Delta, Ministry of Education, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou 510006, China.

Abstract

Municipal sewage treatment plants (MSTPs) are environmental pools for antibiotic resistant bacteria (ARB) and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs), which is cause for growing environmental-health concerns. In this study, the effects of different wastewater treatment processes on microbial antibiotic resistance in four MSTPs were investigated. PCR, q-PCR, and molecular cloning integrally indicated that the tetracycline resistance (tet) genes significantly reduced after activated-sludge treatment. Illumina high-throughput sequencing revealed that the broad-spectrum profile of ARGs and mobile element genes (MGEs) were also greatly decreased by one order of magnitude via activated sludge treatment and were closely associated with each other. Correlations between ARGs and bacterial communities showed that potential ARB, such as Acinetobacter, Bacteroides, and Cloaibacterium, were removed by the activated-sludge process. Sedimentation processes cannot significantly affect the bacterial structure, resulting in the relative abundance of ARGs, MGEs, and ARB in second-clarifier effluent water being similar to activated sludge. A comprehensive study of ARGs associated with MGEs and bacterial structure might be technologically guided for activated sludge design and operation in the MSTPs, to purposefully control ARGs carried by pathogenic hosts and mobility.

Keywords: antibiotic resistance genes; bacterial community structure; high-throughput sequencing; metagenomic; mobile genetic elements; sewage treatment plant.

Publication types

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

MeSH terms

Angiotensin Receptor Antagonists
Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme Inhibitors / pharmacology
Anti-Bacterial Agents / pharmacology
Drug Resistance, Microbial / genetics
Genes, Bacterial
High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing
Interspersed Repetitive Sequences
Microbiota*
Sewage* / microbiology

Substances

Sewage
Angiotensin Receptor Antagonists
Anti-Bacterial Agents
Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme Inhibitors

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, grant numbers 52025102 and 52192682; the Open Foundation of Key Laboratory of Yellow River Water Environment in Gansu Province, grant numbers 20JR2RA002; Science Foundation for Young Scholars of Gansu Province, grant numbers 21JR7RA333; the Open Foundation of State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, grant numbers PCRRF21018; Innovation Fund of Higher Education of Gansu Province, grant numbers 2022A-037; and Youth Foundation of Lanzhou Jiaotong University, grant numbers 2021011.