School of Life Science, Jinggangshan University, Ji'an 343009, China.
School of Life Science, Jinggangshan University, Ji'an 343009, China; College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Guilin University of Technology, Guilin 541004, China.
Sci Total Environ. 2020 Jul 15;726:138516. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.138516. Epub 2020 Apr 7.
Antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) have been widely detected around the world and are generally viewed as emerging pollutants with environmental persistence. The proliferation of ARGs can be easily promoted by antibiotics. However, the dynamics of ARGs in the environment are still unable to be quantified using a single parameter, which is vital to evaluating the ability of ARGs to spread by antibiotics and effectively controlling ARGs. A new parameter, termed the relative area ratio of sample to control (ΔA), was developed based on the quantitative features determined by ARG-time curves in soils contaminated with sulfonamides (SAs) and verified by quantitative structure-activity relationships (QSARs) models. The results showed that ΔA can not only be used to accurately quantify the characteristics of SAs resistance genes (Suls) over time but also be applied to reveal the relationships between the proliferation of Suls and important factors (i.e., concentrations and chemical structures). Moreover, the ΔA-based QSARs model indicated that bioavailability and the frequency of conjugative transfer, rather than the ability of induced mutations in bacteria, tend to be key processes of the characteristics of the proliferation of Suls. Therefore, ΔA is a useful parameter to perform environmental risk assessments of ARG proliferation in the environment.
抗生素耐药基因 (ARGs) 在世界各地广泛检出，通常被视为具有环境持久性的新兴污染物。抗生素的广泛使用很容易促进 ARGs 的增殖。然而，目前仍无法仅使用单一参数来量化环境中 ARGs 的动态变化，这对于评估抗生素传播 ARGs 的能力和有效控制 ARGs 至关重要。本研究基于受磺胺类药物 (SAs) 污染土壤中 ARG-时间曲线所确定的定量特征，开发了一个新参数，即样品与对照的相对面积比 (ΔA)，并通过定量构效关系 (QSARs) 模型进行了验证。结果表明，ΔA 不仅可以准确地量化随时间推移的 SAs 耐药基因 (Suls) 的特征，还可以揭示 Suls 增殖与重要因素（即浓度和化学结构）之间的关系。此外，基于 ΔA 的 QSARs 模型表明，生物可利用性和接合转移的频率，而不是细菌诱导突变的能力，往往是 Suls 增殖特征的关键过程。因此，ΔA 是评估环境中 ARG 增殖的环境风险的一个有用参数。
