Diversity of herbaceous plants and bacterial communities regulates soil resistome across forest biomes.
Environ Microbiol
; 20(9): 3186-3200, 2018 09.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-29687575
ABSTRACT
Antibiotic resistance is ancient and prevalent in natural ecosystems and evolved long before the utilization of synthetic antibiotics started, but factors influencing the large-scale distribution patterns of natural antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) remain largely unknown. Here, a large-scale investigation over 4000 km was performed to profile soil ARGs, plant communities and bacterial communities from 300 quadrats across five forest biomes with minimal human impact. We detected diverse and abundant ARGs in forests, including over 160 genes conferring resistance to eight major categories of antibiotics. The diversity of ARGs was strongly and positively correlated with the diversity of bacteria, herbaceous plants and mobile genetic elements (MGEs). The ARG composition was strongly correlated with the taxonomic structure of bacteria and herbs. Consistent with this strong correlation, structural equation modelling demonstrated that the positive effects of bacterial and herb communities on ARG patterns were maintained even when simultaneously accounting for multiple drivers (climate, spatial predictors and edaphic factors). These findings suggest a paradigm that the interactions between aboveground and belowground communities shape the large-scale distribution of soil resistomes, providing new knowledge for tackling the emerging environmental antibiotic resistance.
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Health context:
2_ODS3
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Soil Microbiology
/
Bacteria
/
Forests
/
Ecosystem
/
Drug Resistance, Bacterial
/
Anti-Bacterial Agents
Type of study:
Prognostic_studies
Limits:
Humans
Language:
En
Journal:
Environ Microbiol
Year:
2018
Document type:
Article