TY - JOUR
T1 - Mass-immigration shapes the antibiotic resistome of wastewater treatment plants
AU - Zhang, Lanping
AU - Adyari, Bob
AU - Hou, Liyuan
AU - Yang, Xiaoyong
AU - Gad, Mahmoud
AU - Wang, Yuwen
AU - Ma, Cong
AU - Sun, Qian
AU - Tang, Qiang
AU - Zhang, Yifeng
AU - Yu, Chang-Ping
AU - Hu, Anyi
PY - 2024
Y1 - 2024
N2 - Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are the hotspots for the spread of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) into the environment. Nevertheless, a comprehensive assessment of the city-level and short-term daily (inter-day) variations of ARG profiles in the whole process (influent-INF, activated sludge-AS and effluent-EF) of WWTPs is still lacking. Here, 285 ARGs and ten mobile gene elements were monitored in seven WWTPs in Xiamen for seven days via high-throughput qPCR. The average daily load of ARGs to WWTPs was about 1.32 × 1020 copies/d, and a total of 1.56 × 1018 copies/d was discharged to the environment across the entire city. Stochastic processes were the main force determining the assembly of ARG communities during sampling campaign, with their relative importance ranked in the order of INF > EFF > AS. There're little daily variations in ARG richness, abundance, β-diversity composition as well as assembly mechanisms. The results of SourceTracker, variation partitioning analysis, and hierarchical partitioning analysis indicated that bacteria and ARGs from upstream treatment processes played an increasingly dominant role in shaping ARG communities in AS and EFF, respectively, suggesting the importance of mass-immigration of bacteria and ARGs from the source on ARG transport in wastewater treatment processes. This emphasizes the need to revise the way we mitigate ARG contamination but focus on the source of ARGs in urban wastewater.
AB - Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are the hotspots for the spread of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) into the environment. Nevertheless, a comprehensive assessment of the city-level and short-term daily (inter-day) variations of ARG profiles in the whole process (influent-INF, activated sludge-AS and effluent-EF) of WWTPs is still lacking. Here, 285 ARGs and ten mobile gene elements were monitored in seven WWTPs in Xiamen for seven days via high-throughput qPCR. The average daily load of ARGs to WWTPs was about 1.32 × 1020 copies/d, and a total of 1.56 × 1018 copies/d was discharged to the environment across the entire city. Stochastic processes were the main force determining the assembly of ARG communities during sampling campaign, with their relative importance ranked in the order of INF > EFF > AS. There're little daily variations in ARG richness, abundance, β-diversity composition as well as assembly mechanisms. The results of SourceTracker, variation partitioning analysis, and hierarchical partitioning analysis indicated that bacteria and ARGs from upstream treatment processes played an increasingly dominant role in shaping ARG communities in AS and EFF, respectively, suggesting the importance of mass-immigration of bacteria and ARGs from the source on ARG transport in wastewater treatment processes. This emphasizes the need to revise the way we mitigate ARG contamination but focus on the source of ARGs in urban wastewater.
KW - Wastewater treatment plant
KW - Antibiotic resistance genes
KW - Mass immigration
KW - Assembly mechanisms
KW - Daily variation
U2 - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.168193
DO - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.168193
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 37914134
SN - 0048-9697
VL - 908
JO - Science of the Total Environment
JF - Science of the Total Environment
M1 - 168193
ER -
