The diversity of mobilome and resistome of soil during poultry manure application
Antibiotics are growing environmental contaminants leading to public health concern due to enhancing the occurrence of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) including genes that encode resistance to older antibiotics as well as last resort antimicrobials. In the world, antibiotics are frequently used as growth promoters and commonly as therapeutic agents in animal feed. Unfortunately, they are not completely metabolized in the body of animals and ultimately excreted as animal droppings. Therefore, the usage of droppings as manure in agriculture may result in changes in microbiome diversity and in the promotion of co- occurrence of ARGs in the soil and ultimately leads to their transfer to other environments. The aim of the study was to perform a metagenomic analysis of poultry manure to estimate the risk of transmission of ARGs to fertilized soil and changes in the diversity of soil natural microbiome during soil supplementation by poultry manure. As a result of fertilization with poultry manure, large amounts of multidrug resistance (MDR) genes and insertion sequences introduced into the soil, including those related to the mobility of ARGs in the pathogens, show stability in the soil environment for up to several months, which indicates that poultry origin manure may pose a considerable risk of rapid mobility of ARGs in the environment generating a serious health risk.  Grant No. 2017/27/B/NZ9/00267 entitled: ”Resistance of environmental microorganisms in the perspective of holistic "One Health" approach” from the National Science Center (Poland) supported this study.