Engineering Research Center of Groundwater Pollution Control and Remediation, Ministry of Education; College of Water Sciences, Beijing Normal University, No 19, Xinjiekouwai Street, Beijing, 100875, China.
Engineering Research Center of Groundwater Pollution Control and Remediation, Ministry of Education; College of Water Sciences, Beijing Normal University, No 19, Xinjiekouwai Street, Beijing, 100875, China.
Water Res. 2022 Oct 1;224:119061. doi: 10.1016/j.watres.2022.119061. Epub 2022 Sep 6.
The effluents of sewage treatment plants (eSTP) are one of the critical contributors of antibiotic resistiome in rivers. Recently, community coalescence has been focused as the entire microbiome interchanges with one another. While works have reported the prevalence of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in eSTP and their effects on river resistome, little research has investigated the extent of resistome coalescence in the environment. In the study, we have addressed the issue and focused on the resistome coalescence of eSTP in an urban river with a typical effluent/river coalescence model, by utilizing high-throughput sequencing (HTS)-based metagenomic assembly analysis. In all, a total of 609 ARGs were found in the eSTP-river system, conferring resistance to 30 antibiotic classes and including some emerging ARGs such as mcr-type, tetX and carbapenemase genes. Statistical analyses including linear discriminant analysis effect size (LEfSe) showed the coalescence of STP effluents increased the diversity and abundance of river resistome, indicating its low resistance to disturb the invasion of resistome community in eSTP. After coalescence in the river, the imprints of STP-derived ARGs presented a temporary increase and gradually decreased trend along the flow path. Further, an innovative fast expectation-maximization microbial source tracking (FEAST) method was used to quantitatively apportion the coalescence event, and demonstrated the contribution of eSTP on river resistome and its attenuation dynamics in the downstream. Notably, correlation-based network analysis and contig-based co-occurrence analysis showed the coalesced resistome in the downstream river co-occurred with human bacterial pathogens, mobile genetic elements and virulence factor genes, indicating potential resistome dissemination risk in the environment. This study provides more profound understanding of resistome coalescence between engineered and natural contexts, which is helpful for optimizing strategies to prevent and control resistome risk in aquatic environment.
污水处理厂（eSTP）的废水是河流中抗生素抗性组的主要贡献者之一。最近，群落凝聚已成为整个微生物组相互交流的焦点。虽然已经有研究报道了 eSTP 中抗生素抗性基因（ARGs）的流行情况及其对河流抗性组的影响，但很少有研究调查环境中抗性组凝聚的程度。在这项研究中，我们通过利用高通量测序（HTS）为基础的宏基因组组装分析，解决了这个问题，并关注了城市河流中具有典型的废水/河流混合模型的 eSTP 抗性组的凝聚情况。在整个 eSTP-河流系统中，共发现了 609 个 ARGs，赋予了 30 种抗生素类别的抗性，包括一些新兴的 ARGs，如 mcr 型、tetX 和碳青霉烯酶基因。包括线性判别分析效应量（LEfSe）在内的统计分析表明，STP 废水的混合增加了河流抗性组的多样性和丰度，表明其对干扰 eSTP 抗性组群落入侵的抵抗力较低。在河流中混合后，源自 STP 的 ARGs 的印记呈现出暂时增加并沿水流路径逐渐减少的趋势。此外，还使用了一种创新的快速期望最大化微生物源追踪（FEAST）方法来定量分配混合事件，并证明了 eSTP 对河流抗性组及其在下游的衰减动态的贡献。值得注意的是，基于相关性的网络分析和基于contig 的共现分析表明，下游河流中的混合抗性组与人类细菌病原体、移动遗传元件和毒力因子基因共现，表明环境中存在潜在的抗性组传播风险。本研究提供了对工程和自然环境之间抗性组凝聚的更深入理解，有助于优化策略，以防止和控制水生环境中的抗性组风险。
