Preprint Article Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

Microbial Community Composition and Antibiotic Resistance Genes Within a North Carolina Urban Water System

Kevin Lambirth
,
Matthew Tsilimigras
ORCID logo ,
Anju Lulla
,
James Johnson
,
Abrar Al-Shaer
,
Orion Wynblatt
,
Shannon Sypolt
,
Cory Brouwer
,
Sandra Clinton
ORCID logo ,
Olya Keen
,
Molly Redmond
ORCID logo ,
Anthony Fodor
,
Cynthia Gibas
* ORCID logo
Version 1 : Received: 13 September 2018 / Approved: 14 September 2018 / Online: 14 September 2018 (06:27:29 CEST)

A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.

Lambirth, K.; Tsilimigras, M.; Lulla, A.; Johnson, J.; Al-Shaer, A.; Wynblatt, O.; Sypolt, S.; Brouwer, C.; Clinton, S.; Keen, O.; Redmond, M.; Fodor, A.; Gibas, C. Microbial Community Composition and Antibiotic Resistance Genes within a North Carolina Urban Water System. Water 2018, 10, 1539. Lambirth, K.; Tsilimigras, M.; Lulla, A.; Johnson, J.; Al-Shaer, A.; Wynblatt, O.; Sypolt, S.; Brouwer, C.; Clinton, S.; Keen, O.; Redmond, M.; Fodor, A.; Gibas, C. Microbial Community Composition and Antibiotic Resistance Genes within a North Carolina Urban Water System. Water 2018, 10, 1539.

Abstract

Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are thought to be potential incubators of antibiotic resistance. Persistence of commonly used antibiotics in wastewater may increase the potential for selection of resistance genes transferred between bacterial populations, some of which may pose a threat to human health. In this study, we measured the concentrations of ten antibiotics in wastewater plant influents and effluents, and in surface waters up- and downstream from two Charlotte area treatment facilities. We performed Illumina shotgun sequencing to assay the microbial community and resistome compositions at each site across four time points from late winter to mid-summer of 2016. Antibiotics are present throughout wastewater treatment, and elevated concentrations of multiple antibiotics are maintained in moving stream water downstream of effluent release. While some human gut and activated sludge associated taxa are detectable downstream, these seem to attenuate with distance while the core microbial community of the stream remains fairly consistent. We observe slight suppression of functional pathways in the downstream microbial communities, including amino acid, carbohydrate and nucleic acid metabolism as well as nucleotide and amino acid scavenging. Nearly all antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) and potentially pathogenic taxa are removed in the treatment process, though a few ARG markers are elevated downstream of effluent release. Taken together, these results represent baseline measurements which future studies can utilize to help to determine which factors control the movement of antibiotics and resistance genes through aquatic urban ecosystems before, during and after wastewater treatment.

Keywords

metagenomics; antibiotic resistance; wastewater; environmental ecology

Subject

Environmental and Earth Sciences, Environmental Science

Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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