Abstract
Over the past decades, the rising antibiotic resistance bacteria (ARB) are continuing to emerge as a global threat due to potential public health risk. Rapidly evolving antibiotic resistance and its persistence in the environment, have underpinned the need for more studies to identify the possible sources and limit the spread. In this context, not commonly studied and a neglected genetic material called extracellular DNA (eDNA) is gaining increased attention as it can be one of the significant drivers for transmission of extracellular ARGS (eARGs) via horizontal gene transfer (HGT) to competent environmental bacteria and diverse sources of antibiotic-resistance genes (ARGs) in the environment. Consequently, this review highlights the studies that address the environmental occurrence of eDNA and encoding eARGs and its impact on the environmental resistome. In this review, we also brief the recent dedicated technological advancements that are accelerating extraction of eDNA and the efficiency of treatment technologies in reducing eDNA that focuses on environmental antibiotic resistance and potential ecological health risk.
Highlights
Risks of antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB) occur in both developed and developing countries.As a result, antibiotic-resistant bacteria are widely recognized as the biggest challenge in achieving universal health care, food security and development [1]
The extent to which extracellular DNA (eDNA) contributes to horizontal gene transfer (HGT) in allochthonous bacteria in the environment is still largely unknown and challenging
Antibiotic-resistance genes (ARGs) encoded in the eDNA in aquatic sediments and water can potentially provide insights concerning the diversity of extracellular ARGS (eARGs) for the environmental antibiotic resistome. eDNA and its encoded eARGs released by the processes of cell death, lysis and secretion could persist in the environment matrices for long periods of time
Summary
Risks of antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB) occur in both developed and developing countries. With the advancement of eDNA extraction technologies, many studies have reported that the occurrence of eDNA and ARGs in anthropogenic impacted environmental matrices including, surface water, soil, sediments, sludge, wastewater and tap water [18,19,20,21,22,23]. DNA or mobile genetic elements (MGEs) such as plasmids containing antibiotic resistance gene markers were shown to transform to natural competent bacteria in microcosm studies. These studies were conducted in ground water, river water, sediments, soil and marine water and sediments [37,41,42,43,44,45,46]. The increasing efficiency in the recovery of eARGs from large volumes of water samples was observed in NAAPs; the authors have not been tested for sediment samples
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