Co-selection of antibiotic resistance genes, and mobile genetic elements in the presence of heavy metals in poultry farm environments

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

  • Sohaib H. Mazhar
  • Xuanji Li
  • Azhar Rashid
  • JunMing Su
  • Junqiang Xu
  • Asker Daniel Brejnrod
  • Jian-Qiang Su
  • Yijian Wu
  • Yong-Guan Zhu
  • Shun Gui Zhou
  • Renwei Feng
  • Christopher Rensing
Abstract
Environmental selection of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) is considered to be caused by antibiotic or metal residues, frequently used in livestock. In this study we examined three commercial poultry farms to correlate the co-occurrence patterns of antibiotic and metal residues to the presence of ARGs. We quantified 283 ARGs, 12 mobile genetic elements (MGEs), 49 targeted antibiotics, 7 heavy metals and sequenced 16S rRNA genes. The abundance and type of ARG were significantly enriched in manure while soil harbored the most diverse bacterial community. Procrustes analysis displayed significant correlations between ARGs/MGEs and the microbiome. Cadmium (Cd), arsenic (As), zinc (Zn), copper (Cu) and lead (Pb) were responsible for a majority of positive correlations to ARGs when compared to antibiotics. Integrons and transposons co-occurred with ARGs corresponding to 9 classes of antibiotics, especially Class1 integrase intI-1LC. Redundancy analysis (RDA) and Variance partitioning analysis (VPA) showed that antibiotics, metals, MGEs and bacteria explain solely 0.7%, 5.7%, 12.4%, and 21.9% of variances of ARGs in the microbial community, respectively. These results suggested that bacterial composition and horizontal gene transfer were the major factors shaping the composition of ARGs; Metals had a bigger effect on ARG profile than detected antibiotics in this study.
Original languageEnglish
Article number142702
JournalScience of the Total Environment
Volume755
Issue numberPart 2
Number of pages10
ISSN0048-9697
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021

ID: 250869968