title: Continental-scale pollution of estuaries with antibiotic resistance genes.
abstract: Antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) have moved from the environmental resistome into human commensals and pathogens, driven by human selection with antimicrobial agents. These genes have increased in abundance in humans and domestic animals, to become common components of waste streams. Estuarine habitats lie between terrestrial/freshwater and marine ecosystems, acting as natural filtering points for pollutants. Here, we have profiled ARGs in sediments from 18 estuaries over 4,000 km of coastal China using high-throughput quantitative polymerase chain reaction, and investigated their relationship with bacterial communities, antibiotic residues and socio-economic factors. ARGs in estuarine sediments were diverse and abundant, with over 200 different resistance genes being detected, 18 of which were found in all 90 sediment samples. The strong correlations of identified resistance genes with known mobile elements, network analyses and partial redundancy analysis all led to the conclusion that human activity is responsible for the abundance and dissemination of these ARGs. Such widespread pollution with xenogenetic elements has environmental, agricultural and medical consequences.
authors.affiliation: Key Lab of Urban Environment and Health, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen 361021, China.|State Key Lab of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China.
authors.forename: Yong-Guan
authors.initials: YG
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: Key Lab of Urban Environment and Health, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen 361021, China.
authors.forename: Yi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: Graduate School at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen 518055, China.
authors.forename: Bing
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Key Lab of Urban Environment and Health, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen 361021, China.
authors.forename: Chu-Long
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: State Key Lab of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China.
authors.forename: Si-Yu
authors.initials: SY
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Key Lab of Urban Environment and Health, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen 361021, China.
authors.forename: Shen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: Key Lab of Urban Environment and Health, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen 361021, China.
authors.forename: Yong-Shan
authors.initials: YS
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Environmental Biotechnology Laboratory, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China.
authors.forename: Tong
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, Genes to Geoscience Research Centre, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales 2109, Australia.
authors.forename: Michael R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Gillings
authors.affiliation: Key Lab of Urban Environment and Health, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen 361021, China.
authors.forename: Jian-Qiang
authors.initials: JQ
authors.lastname: Su
mesh_terms: D001419:Bacteria / Q000235:genetics* / Q000302:isolation & purification; D002681:China; D004269:DNA, Bacterial / Q000032:analysis*; D024881:Drug Resistance, Bacterial; D063366:Estuaries; D005798:Genes, Bacterial; D019015:Geologic Sediments / Q000382:microbiology*; D006801:Humans; D020071:Interspersed Repetitive Sequences; D060888:Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction
chemical_list: D004269:DNA, Bacterial