Selection and horizontal gene transfer underlie microdiversity-level heterogeneity in resistance gene fate during wastewater treatment

Connor L. Brown, Ayella Maile-Moskowitz, Allison J. Lopatkin, Kang Xia, Latania K. Logan, Benjamin C. Davis, Liqing Zhang, Peter J. Vikesland () and Amy Pruden ()
Additional contact information
Connor L. Brown: Virginia Tech
Ayella Maile-Moskowitz: Virginia Tech
Allison J. Lopatkin: University of Rochester
Kang Xia: Virginia Tech
Latania K. Logan: Emory University
Benjamin C. Davis: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Liqing Zhang: Virginia Tech
Peter J. Vikesland: Virginia Tech
Amy Pruden: Virginia Tech

Nature Communications, 2024, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: Abstract Activated sludge is the centerpiece of biological wastewater treatment, as it facilitates removal of sewage-associated pollutants, fecal bacteria, and pathogens from wastewater through semi-controlled microbial ecology. It has been hypothesized that horizontal gene transfer facilitates the spread of antibiotic resistance genes within the wastewater treatment plant, in part because of the presence of residual antibiotics in sewage. However, there has been surprisingly little evidence to suggest that sewage-associated antibiotics select for resistance at wastewater treatment plants via horizontal gene transfer or otherwise. We addressed the role of sewage-associated antibiotics in promoting antibiotic resistance using lab-scale sequencing batch reactors fed field-collected wastewater, metagenomic sequencing, and our recently developed bioinformatic tool Kairos. Here, we found confirmatory evidence that fluctuating levels of antibiotics in sewage are associated with horizontal gene transfer of antibiotic resistance genes, microbial ecology, and microdiversity-level differences in resistance gene fate in activated sludge.

Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49742-8 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:15:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-024-49742-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-49742-8

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().