Abstract
Prophylactic usage and high persistent nature of several antibiotics have put selective pressure on the native microbial population that led to the emergence, propagation, and persistence of antibiotic resistance in nature. The surveillance of antibiotic resistome pattern and identification of points of intervention throughout the different environmental habitats will help to break the flow of antibiotic resistance from environmental bacteria to human pathogens. The present study compares the occurrence, diversity, and abundance of ARGs in industrial sludge, wetland sludge, and sediment sample contaminated with pharmaceutical discharge. Metagenomes were mined for the presence of ARGs against the ResFinder 3.2 database using BLASTn program. Pharmaceutical sample (2.52%) showed high degree of ARG abundance and richness as compared with ETP sludge (2.28%) and wetland sludge samples (1.29%). The modern resistome pattern represented by critically important resistance genes against tetracycline (tetA, tetC, tetW, tetT, and tetS/M) and quinolone (qnrS, qnrVC, and qnrD) was identified in pharmaceutical sediment sample. However, effluent treatment plant (ETP) sludge sample showed abundance of multidrug efflux pumps indicating the presence of primitive resistome profile. In conclusion, the indiscriminate distribution pattern of antibiotic resistance genes in three selected environmental sites suggests enrichment and distribution of environmental niche–driven resistance. The study also suggests effluent discharge site from pharmaceutical industries and ETPs as pivotal points of intervention for the mitigation of antibiotic resistance.
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Data availability
The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the MG-RAST repository [https://www.mg-rast.org/linkin.cgi?project=mgp90567].
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Acknowledgments
Sakina Bombaywala and Varsha Jha are grateful to Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and University Grant Commission (UGC) for the award of JRF and SRF, respectively. The authors highly acknowledge the Director, CSIR- National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (CSIR-NEERI), for providing facilities for this work. The manuscript has been checked for plagiarism by Knowledge Resource Centre, CSIR-NEERI, Nagpur, India, and assigned KRC number is CSIR-NEERI/KRC/2020/JAN/EBGD/2.
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HJP and NAD conceptualized and designed the study; SB and VJ performed the sample collection, metagenomic DNA isolation, bioinformatics analysis, and equally contributed initial manuscript writing; NAD and AB planned the bioinformatics analysis; NAD and AB improved the manuscript.
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Bombaywala, S., Dafale, N.A., Jha, V. et al. Study of indiscriminate distribution of restrained antimicrobial resistome of different environmental niches. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 10780–10790 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-11318-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-11318-6