Presence and distribution of sulfonamide-resistance and integron-integrase genes in a municipal waterwater treatment plan

Antibiotic resistance bacteria and genes pose a significant risk to public health, and their presence in wastewater treatment plants generates concerns about antibiotic resistance spreading. Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are thought to be likely hotspots for antibiotic resistance diffusion in the environment because they provide suitable circumstances such as an abundance of carbon sources and other nutrients for ARB proliferation as well as the horizontal transfer of ARGs across various bacteria. Therefore, suitable treatment systems need to be developed for its removal and control. For this, the efficiency of several treatment processes on the removal of ARGs through sludge and wastewater samples from the targeted WWTP plants was determined. The initial organic load of samples had been tested in the lab followed by DNA extraction and quantitative polymerase reaction test (qPCR) to identify the concentration of the 16s rRNA, sul1, and intl1 gene. In both sul1 and 16s rRNA samples, the concentration by copy number per volume has increased approximately four times more from the influent concentration to the effluent concentration, and approximately 2.25 times for intl1, demonstrating that the targeted WWTP had only a positive effect on the concentration of targeted ARGs. The normalization to the 16s rRNA showed, that the relative abundance of sul1 genes compared to the total bacterial community remains constant from the influent to the effluent while for the case of intl1, there was a higher increase from the influent ratio to the effluent ratio Indicating that WWTP treatment techniques or settings promote the development or discharge of bacteria containing integrons. In comparison to prior research, the byproduct concentration by the copy number of sul1 gene per gram was greater in the pretreatment of scraps and compared to the sludge.