Prevalence of antibiotic resistance genes in bacteriophage DNA fraction from Funan River water in Sichuan, China

摘要

To better understand the role that bacteriophages play in antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) dissemination in the aquatic environment, 36 water samples were collected from the Funan River in Sichuan, China. The occurrence of 15 clinically relevant ARGs and one class 1 integron geneint1in phage-particle DNA were evaluated by PCR. The abundance of ARGs (blaCTX-M,sul1, andaac-(6′)-1b-cr) was determined by quantitative PCR (qPCR). High prevalence of theint1gene (66.7%) was found in the phage-particle DNA of tested samples, followed bysul1(41.7%),sul2(33.3%),blaCTX-M(33.3%),aac-(6′)-lb-cr(25%),aph(3′)-IIIa (16.7%), andermF(8.3%). The qPCR data showed higher gene copy (GC) numbers in samples collected near a hospital (site 7) and a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) (site 10) (P < .05). Particularly the absolute abundance ofaac-(6′)-lb-crgene was significantly higher than theblaCTX-Mandsul1genes with the gene copy (GC) numbers of 5.73 log10 copy/mL for site 7 and 4.99 log10 copy/mL for site 10. To our best knowledge, this is the first study to report the presence ofsul2,aac-(6′)-lb-cr,ermFandaph(3′)-IIIagenes in bacteriophage DNA derived from aquatic environments. Our findings highlight the potential of ARGs to be transmitted via bacteriophages in the aquatic environment.