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Occurrence and abundance of tetracycline, sulfonamide resistance genes, and class 1 integron in five wastewater treatment plants

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Abstract

To understand the transport and fate of antibiotic resistance genes in wastewater treatment plants, 12 resistance genes (ten tetracycline resistance genes, two sulfonamides genes) and class 1 integron gene (intI1) were studied in five wastewater treatment plants with different treatment processes and different sewage sources. Among these resistance genes, sulfonamides genes (sul1 and sul2) were of the most prevalent genes with detection frequency of 100 %. The effluent water contained fewer types of resistance genes than the influent in most selected plants. The abundance of five quantified resistance genes (tetG, tetW, tetX, sul1, and intI1) decreased in effluent of plants treating domestic or industrial wastewater with anaerobic/aerobic or membrane bioreactor (MBR) technologies, but tetG, tetX, sul1, and intI1 increased along the treatment units of plants treating vitamin C production wastewater by anaerobic/aerobic technology. In plant treating cephalosporins production wastewater by UASB/aerobic process, the quantities of tetG, tetX, and sul1 first decreased in anaerobic effluent water but then increased in aerobic effluent water.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation of China (no. 51278241) and the Jiangsu Natural Science Foundation (no. BK2011016).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, School of the Environment, Nanjing University, 210046, Jiangsu, People’s Republic of China

    Jing Du, Hongqiang Ren, Jinju Geng, Yan Zhang, Ke Xu & Lili Ding

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  1. Jing Du
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  2. Hongqiang Ren
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  3. Jinju Geng
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  4. Yan Zhang
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  5. Ke Xu
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  6. Lili Ding
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Correspondence to Hongqiang Ren or Jinju Geng.

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Responsible editor: Gerald Thouand

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Du, J., Ren, H., Geng, J. et al. Occurrence and abundance of tetracycline, sulfonamide resistance genes, and class 1 integron in five wastewater treatment plants. Environ Sci Pollut Res 21, 7276–7284 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-014-2613-5

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