Abstract
Antibiotic resistance genes (ARG) have been considered as a global emerging threat to public health systems. As special locations where both antibiotics and ARGs are directly used, biology laboratories are poorly studied but potential important emission sources where not only the environmental stress is strong but also obtaining resistance is much easier comparing to other well studied hot spots including farms, hospitals, wastewater treatment plants and landfills where antibiotics but not ARGs are used or discharged. Therefore, in this study, 11 Swiss biology laboratories working on different fields and located in the city center, suburb and rural area were studied to reveal the abundance and diversity of airborne ARGs in them and their surrounding areas with Colony-forming units (CFU) cultivation and quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction (qPCR). Most biology laboratories did not discharge significant amounts or varieties of ARGs and cultivable bacteria via air. No correlation was found between the number of CFUs and the abundance of 16S rRNA, but two clusters of correlated airborne ARGs, the animal husbandry related cluster, and city and hospital related cluster were identified in this study. Although most biology laboratories may not be the emission sources of a wide variety of airborne ARGs, the ARGs in the animal husbandry related cluster which are abundant in the animal laboratories and aadA1 which is abundant in the laboratories working on other eukaryocytes need to be furtherly studied to make sure if they are potential health risks for the researchers.
Highlights
IntroductionThese places can be sorted into two types, the former two are the places where antibiotics are used and the latter two are the places where antibiotics and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) are discharged
No correlation was found between the number of Colony-forming units (CFU) and the abundance of 16S rRNA, but two clusters of correlated airborne antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs), the animal husbandry related cluster, and city and hospital related cluster were identified in this study
Cultivable airborne bacteria concentration of all samples varied from 1 CFU/m3, sample RL2 to 41 CFU/m3, sample CO3 (Fig. 2), significantly lower than the cultivable airborne bacteria concentrations of library, hospital, other indoor environmental air samples and outdoor air samples such as wastewater treatment plant measured with tryptic soy agar (TSA) and blood agar (BA) medium in previous studies (Gilbert et al, 2010; Goh et al, 2000; Li et al, 2016b; Priyamvada et al, 2018)
Summary
These places can be sorted into two types, the former two are the places where antibiotics are used and the latter two are the places where antibiotics and ARGs are discharged
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