Sensitive response mechanism of ARGs and MGEs to initial designed temperature during swine manure and food waste co-composting

Abstract

The rapid aerobic composting process has been used to reduce organic wastes, but the associated risks of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) need to evaluate in an efficient way. The primary objective of this work was to explore the underlying mechanism of initial adjustment in composting temperature on the variation of ARGs, mobile genetic elements (MGEs), and microbial composition during co-composting. The co-composting was initially externally heated (T2) for 5 days. The results showed that ARGs abundance in conventional composting (T1) was reduced by 49.36%, while multidrug was enriched by 86.16% after a period of 30 days. While in T2 ARGs were removed by 79.46% particularly the fraction of sulfonamide, multidrug, and vancomycin resistance genes were >90% without rebounding of any ARGs. Whereas, MGEs were reduced by 68.12% and 93.62% in T1 and T2, while the half-lives of ARGs and MGEs were lower in T2 compared to T1 (86.3%,86.7%). T2 also affected the metabolism function by regulating carbohydrate metabolism (9.62–10.39%) and amino acid metabolism (9.92–10.93%). Apart from this, the potential human pathogenic bacteria Pseudomonas was reduced by 90.6% in T2 and only 32.9% in T1 respectively. Network analysis showed that Ureibacillus, Weissella, Corynebacterium, Escherichia-Shigella, Acinetobacter were the main host of multiple genes. Structural equation models exhibited that bacterial communities were mainly responsible for the enrichment of ARGs in T1, whereas, it was directly affected by MGEs in T2. Similarly, ARGs variation was directly related to composting temperature. With this simple strategy, ARGs associated risk can be significantly reduced in composting.