Issue 5, 2023

Nanoplastics promote the dissemination of antibiotic resistance through conjugative gene transfer: implications from oxidative stress and gene expression

Abstract

Antibiotic resistance is a growing challenge and a major public health concern worldwide. Nanoplastics, which are ubiquitous in aquatic ecosystems, may cause a potential risk to the dissemination of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in bacteria. However, the extent to which nanoplastics can cause an increase in antibiotic resistance by the regulation of the conjugative transfer of ARGs within bacteria remains unknown. In this study, polystyrene nanoplastics (PSNPs) with small sizes (S-PSNPs) and large sizes (L-PSNPs) were applied at a wide concentration range of 0.1–200 mg L−1 to investigate their effects on plasmid-mediated conjugative transfer of ARGs between E. coli strains. The results revealed that S-PSNPs significantly enhanced the conjugative transfer frequency of the RP4 plasmid up to 1.51 fold at the 10 mg L−1 exposure level compared with untreated cells; however, L-PSNPs generally caused no significant effect. We also employed multiple approaches to reveal the mechanisms, which demonstrated that PSNPs facilitated the conjugative transfer of ARGs by inducing excessive reactive oxygen species and oxidative stress, increasing cell membrane permeability, up-regulating the expression of mating pair formation genes (trbBp and traF) and DNA transfer and replication genes (trfAp and traJ), and down-regulating the global regulatory gene expression (korA, korB, and trbA). These findings provide insights regarding the contributions and the underlying mechanisms of nanoplastics to the dissemination of ARGs, and are helpful for the evaluation of the public health and environmental and ecological risks caused by nanoplastics.

Graphical abstract: Nanoplastics promote the dissemination of antibiotic resistance through conjugative gene transfer: implications from oxidative stress and gene expression

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
18 Pun 2022
Accepted
14 Kol 2023
First published
01 Ube 2023

Environ. Sci.: Nano, 2023,10, 1329-1340

Nanoplastics promote the dissemination of antibiotic resistance through conjugative gene transfer: implications from oxidative stress and gene expression

X. Liu, R. Xu, H. Wu, K. Xu, W. Zhang, Z. Wang and W. Gong, Environ. Sci.: Nano, 2023, 10, 1329 DOI: 10.1039/D2EN01036D

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements