Antibiotic resistance gene transfer during anaerobic digestion with added copper: Important roles of mobile genetic elements

Abstract

The abuse of heavy metals as feed additives in livestock is widespread and it might aggravate the spread of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in the environment. However, the mechanisms that allow heavy metals to increase the transmission of ARGs in the environment remain unclear. Cu is the heavy metal present at the highest concentration in livestock manure, and thus Cu was selected to investigate the responses of ARGs to heavy metals. The effects of the microbial communities, mobile genetic elements (MGEs), and heavy metal resistance genes (HMRGs) on ARGs were determined in the presence of 75 and 227 mg L−1 Cu in a swine manure anaerobic digestion (AD) system. In the AD products, the presence of residual Cu (75 and 227 mg L−1) increased the total ARGs, HMRGs, and some MGEs, and the higher Cu selected more ARGs than the lower Cu treatment. The results demonstrated that Cu could promote the co-selection of HMRGs, ARGs, and MGEs. The different levels of Cu did not change the bacterial community composition, but they influenced the abundances of bacteria during AD. Network analysis showed that the presence of Cu increased the co-occurrence of specific bacteria containing ARGs, HMRGs, and MGEs. Furthermore, the co-occurrence of MGEs and ARGs increased greatly compared with that of HMRGs and ARGs. Therefore, compared HMRGs, the increased MGEs had the main effect on increasing of ARGs.