Selectively enrichment of antibiotics and ARGs by microplastics in river, estuary and marine waters

Abstract

The partition of antibiotics and antibiotic resistant genes (ARGs) between the microplastics (MPs) and the surrounding water with various salinity are still unclear. In this study, we hypothesized that adsorption of antibiotics on MPs might cause a significant change of the structure of microbial communities, diversity and abundance of ARGs on MPs and this might be further affected by change of salinity. In this study, we investigated adsorption of four common antibiotics (sulfamerazine, tetracycline, chloramphenicol and tylosin) to polyethylene (PE) MPs in river, estuary and marine waters, and the differences of antibiotic resistant genes (ARGs) and bacterial communities on MPs and in the three waters. The results showed that MPs can enrich antibiotics, ARGs and microbes from the surrounding water. Elevated salinity could reduce adsorption of antibiotics to MPs and the abundance of ARGs. For example, MPs can concentrate more antibiotics and ARGs in the fresh river water than in the estuary and the marine waters. In addition, ARGs and bacterial communities on MPs at various salinity were significantly different under the pressure of four antibiotics. On MPs, sul1, sulA/folP-01, tetA, tetC, tetX and ermE increased significantly but a few new ARGs such as sulA/folP-01 and tetA appeared. The structure of the bacterial communities on MPs was different from the surrounding water since some bacteria species found on MPs were barely detected in the surrounding water while some genera on MPs vanished after exposure to antibiotics. As the antibiotics adsorbed and the ARGs on MPs decreased with the water salinity, the structure of the communities on MPs thus varied with salinity change. These findings are important to understand the effects of MPs on the transport, fate and ecological risk of antibiotics and ARGs in different aquatic environments.