Characteristics of ARG-carrying plasmidome in the cultivable microbial community from wastewater treatment system under high oxytetracycline concentration

Shi, Yanhong; Zhang, Hong; Tian, Zhe; Yang, Min; Zhang, Yu

doi:10.1007/s00253-018-8738-6

Applied genetics and molecular biotechnology
Published: 13 January 2018

Characteristics of ARG-carrying plasmidome in the cultivable microbial community from wastewater treatment system under high oxytetracycline concentration

Yanhong Shi^1,2,
Hong Zhang¹,
Zhe Tian^1,2,
Min Yang^1,2 &
Yu Zhang^1,2

Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology volume 102, pages 1847–1858 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

Studies on antibiotic production wastewater have shown that even a single antibiotic can select for multidrug resistant bacteria in aquatic environments. It is speculated that plasmids are an important mechanism of multidrug resistance (MDR) under high concentrations of antibiotics. Herein, two metagenomic libraries were constructed with plasmid DNA extracted from cultivable microbial communities in a biological wastewater treatment reactor supplemented with 0 (CONTROL) or 25 mg/L of oxytetracycline (OTC-25). The OTC-25 plasmidome reads were assigned to 72 antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) conferring resistance to 13 types of antibiotics. Dominant ARGs, encoding resistance to tetracycline, aminoglycoside, sulfonamide, and multidrug resistance genes, were enriched in the plasmidome under 25 mg/L of oxytetracycline. Furthermore, 17 contiguous multiple-ARG carrying contigs (carrying ≥ 2 ARGs) were discovered in the OTC-25 plasmidome, whereas only nine were found in the CONTROL. Mapping of the OTC-25 plasmidome reads to completely sequenced plasmids revealed that the conjugative IncU resistance plasmid pFBAOT6 of Aeromonas caviae, carrying multidrug resistance transporter (pecM), tetracycline resistance genes (tetA, tetR), and transposase genes, might be a potential prevalent resistant plasmid in the OTC-25 plasmidome. Additionally, two novel resistant plasmids (containing contig C301682 carrying multidrug resistant operon mexCD-oprJ and contig C301632 carrying the tet36 and transposases genes) might also be potential prevalent resistant plasmids in the OTC-25 plasmidome. This study will be helpful to better understand the role of plasmids in the development of MDR in water environments under high antibiotic concentrations.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Ye Deng and Dr. Jie Feng for their help in statistical analysis.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Scientific Foundation of China (21437005).

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State Key Laboratory of Environmental Aquatic Chemistry, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100085, China
Yanhong Shi, Hong Zhang, Zhe Tian, Min Yang & Yu Zhang
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 19A Yu-Quan Road, Beijing, 100049, China
Yanhong Shi, Zhe Tian, Min Yang & Yu Zhang

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Yanhong Shi
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Hong Zhang
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Zhe Tian
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Min Yang
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Yu Zhang
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Yu Zhang, Yanhong Shi, and Min Yang designed research; Yanhong Shi, Hong Zhang performed research; Yanhong Shi, Zhe Tian, Yu Zhang, and Min Yang analyzed data and wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Yu Zhang.

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Shi, Y., Zhang, H., Tian, Z. et al. Characteristics of ARG-carrying plasmidome in the cultivable microbial community from wastewater treatment system under high oxytetracycline concentration. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 102, 1847–1858 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-018-8738-6

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Received: 02 September 2017
Revised: 19 December 2017
Accepted: 26 December 2017
Published: 13 January 2018
Issue Date: February 2018
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-018-8738-6

Keywords

Antibiotic resistance genes
Plasmids
Metagenomic sequencing
High antibiotic concentration