Issue 12, 2023

Cyanobacterial extracellular antibacterial substances could promote the spread of antibiotic resistance: impacts and reasons

Abstract

Many studies have shown that antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) can be facilitated by a variety of antibacterial substances. Cyanobacteria are photosynthetic bacteria that are widely distributed in the ocean. Some extracellular substances produced by marine cyanobacteria have been found to possess antibacterial activity. However, the impact of these extracellular substances on ARGs is unclear. Therefore, we established groups of seawater microcosms that contained different concentrations (1000, 100, 10, 1, 0.1, 0.01, and 0 μg mL−1) of cyanobacterial extracellular substances (CES), and tracked the changes of 17 types of ARGs, the integron gene (intI1), as well as the bacterial community at different time points. The results showed that CES could enrich most ARGs (15/17) in the initial stage, particularly at low concentrations (10 and 100 μg mL−1). The correlation analysis showed a positive correlation between several ARGs and intI1. It is suggested that the abundance of intI1 increased with CES may contribute to the changes of these ARGs, and co-resistance of CES may be the underlying reason for the similar variation pattern of some ARGs. Moreover, the results of qPCR and high-throughput sequencing of 16S rRNA showed that CES had an inhibitory impact on the growth of bacterial communities. High concentrations of CES were found to alter the structure of bacterial communities. Co-occurrence networks showed that bacteria elevated in the high concentration group of CES and might serve as the potential hosts for a variety of ARGs. In general, marine cyanobacteria could play an important role in the global dissemination of ARGs and antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARBs).

Graphical abstract: Cyanobacterial extracellular antibacterial substances could promote the spread of antibiotic resistance: impacts and reasons

Associated articles

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
16 7月 2023
Accepted
01 11月 2023
First published
02 11月 2023

Environ. Sci.: Processes Impacts, 2023,25, 2139-2147

Cyanobacterial extracellular antibacterial substances could promote the spread of antibiotic resistance: impacts and reasons

R. Xin, K. Zhang, D. Yu, Y. Zhang, Y. Ma and Z. Niu, Environ. Sci.: Processes Impacts, 2023, 25, 2139 DOI: 10.1039/D3EM00306J

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