Host- plasmid network structure in wastewater is linked to antimicrobial resistance genes

Alice Risely, Arthur Newbury, Thibault Stalder, Benno I. Simmons, Eva M. Top, Angus Buckling and Dirk Sanders ()
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Alice Risely: University of Salford
Arthur Newbury: University of Exeter
Thibault Stalder: University of Idaho
Benno I. Simmons: University of Exeter
Eva M. Top: University of Idaho
Angus Buckling: University of Exeter
Dirk Sanders: University of Exeter

Nature Communications, 2024, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract As mobile genetic elements, plasmids are central for our understanding of antimicrobial resistance spread in microbial communities. Plasmids can have varying fitness effects on their host bacteria, which will markedly impact their role as antimicrobial resistance vectors. Using a plasmid population model, we first show that beneficial plasmids interact with a higher number of hosts than costly plasmids when embedded in a community with multiple hosts and plasmids. We then analyse the network of a natural host-plasmid wastewater community from a Hi-C metagenomics dataset. As predicted by the model, we find that antimicrobial resistance encoding plasmids, which are likely to have positive fitness effects on their hosts in wastewater, interact with more bacterial taxa than non-antimicrobial resistance plasmids and are disproportionally important for connecting the entire network compared to non- antimicrobial resistance plasmids. This highlights the role of antimicrobials in restructuring host-plasmid networks by increasing the benefits of antimicrobial resistance carrying plasmids, which can have consequences for the spread of antimicrobial resistance genes through microbial networks. Furthermore, that antimicrobial resistance encoding plasmids are associated with a broader range of hosts implies that they will be more robust to turnover of bacterial strains.

Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-44827-w

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