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16S rDNA-Based Amplicon Analysis Unveiled a Correlation Between the Bacterial Diversity and Antibiotic Resistance Genes of Bacteriome of Commercial Smokeless Tobacco Products

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Abstract

The distribution of bacterial-derived antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in smokeless tobacco products is less explored and encourages understanding of the ARG profile of Indian smokeless tobacco products. Therefore, in the present investigation, ten commercial smokeless tobacco products were assessed for their bacterial diversity to understand the correlation between the inhabitant bacteria and predicted ARGs using a 16S rDNA-based metagenome analysis. Overall analysis showed the dominance of two phyla, i.e., Firmicutes (43.07%) and Proteobacteria (8.13%) among the samples, where Bacillus (9.76%), Terribacillus (8.06%), Lysinibacillus (5.8%), Alkalibacterium (5.6%), Oceanobacillus (3.52%), and Dickeya (3.1%) like genera were prevalent among these phyla. The phylogenetic investigation of communities by reconstruction of unobserved states (PICRUSt)-based analysis revealed 217 ARGs which were categorized into nine groups. Cationic antimicrobial polypeptides (CAMP, 33.8%), vancomycin (23.4%), penicillin-binding protein (13.8%), multidrug resistance MDR (10%), and β-lactam (9.3%) were among the top five contributors to ARGs. Staphylococcus, Dickeya, Bacillus, Aerococcus, and Alkalibacterium showed their strong and significant correlation (p value < 0.05) with various antibiotic resistance mechanisms. ARGs of different classes (blaTEM, blaSHV, blaCTX, tetX, vanA, aac3-II, mcr-1, intI-1, and intI2) were also successfully amplified in the metagenomes of SMT samples using their specific primers. The prevalence of ARGs in inhabitant bacteria of smokeless tobacco products suggests making steady policies to regulate the hygiene of commercial smokeless tobacco products.

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Data Availability

Illumina HiSeq data of this investigation has been submitted to the NCBI Sequence Read Archive (SRA) database under the BioProject accession number PRJNA1033989.

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Acknowledgements

AV and DV are thankful to Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University (BBAU), Lucknow, India, and Gautam Buddha Central Library, BBAU, Lucknow, India, for providing infrastructure and access to several journals and other useful online resources.

Funding

One of the authors (DV) received financial assistance from the University Grant Commission, New Delhi, India, under project no. UGC-BSR (F-30.442/2018/BSR).

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  1. Department of Environmental Microbiology, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow, India, 226025

    Akanksha Vishwakarma & Digvijay Verma

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DV conceived the idea and designed the analysis of the present work. AV performed the NGS-based analysis and generated the analytical graphs. AV and DV wrote the manuscript. Both the authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Digvijay Verma.

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Vishwakarma, A., Verma, D. 16S rDNA-Based Amplicon Analysis Unveiled a Correlation Between the Bacterial Diversity and Antibiotic Resistance Genes of Bacteriome of Commercial Smokeless Tobacco Products. Appl Biochem Biotechnol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12010-024-04857-y

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