Abstract
Aquaculture sediments are a purported sizable pool of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). However, the pathways for transmission of ARGs from sediments to animals and humans remain unclear. We conducted an ARG survey in sediments from a bullfrog production facility located in Guangdong, China, and simulated zebrafish breeding systems were constructed, with or without biochar addition in sediments, to explore the effects of biochar on ARGs and their precursors of the sediment and zebrafish gut. After 60 days, 6 subtypes of ARGs and intI1 were detected, with sediments harboring more ARGs than zebrafish gut. The addition of biochar reduced the abundance of ARGs in the sediment and zebrafish gut, as well as suppressed the horizontal transmission of ARGs from sediment to zebrafish gut. Network analysis and partial least squares path modeling revealed that ARG enrichment was mainly affected by bacterial groups dominated by Nitrospirae, Gemmatimonades, Chloroflexi, and Cyanobacteria and intI1. Our findings provide insights into the transmission of ARGs from sediment to animals and highlight the efficacy of biochar amendments to aquaculture sediments to reduce the transmission of ARGs.
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source water), S2 = bullfrog pond, and S3 = gutterway (wastewater discharge)
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Acknowledgements
We thank zebrafish breeding center of Medical College of South China University of Technology for providing helpful suggestions.
Funding
This research was supported financially by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China for State Key Research and Development Project (2016YFC0400702), and the Overseas Outstanding Teacher Project from the Department of Science and Technology of Guangdong Province (No. 2020A1414010108).
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Fengjie Hu: conceptualization, methodology, software, data curation, writing—original draft preparation. Randy Dahlgren: visualization, investigation. Taiping Zhang: writing—reviewing and editing. Jinni Liang: validation. Jiahui Xiao: validation. Zidan Liu: investigation, visualization.
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Highlights
• Amendment of biochar decreases ARGs abundance in bullfrog breeding sediment and guts of zebrafishes.
• Biochar’s impacts on inhibiting ability for all ARGs weaken after excessive addition.
• IntI1 significantly affected the horizontal gene transfer of ARGs in sediment.
• Possible transfer mechanism and pathway of ARGs between sediment and animals were proposed.
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Hu, F., Zhang, T., Liang, J. et al. Impact of biochar on persistence and diffusion of antibiotic resistance genes in sediment from an aquaculture pond. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 57918–57930 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-19700-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-19700-2