Response of antibiotic and heavy metal resistance genes to two different temperature sequences in anaerobic digestion of waste activated sludge
Graphical abstract
Introduction
One of the major drawbacks of any activated sludge process is that huge amounts of waste activated sludge (WAS) are produced as a by-product (Appels et al., 2011). According to Zhang et al. (2017b), approximately 45 million dry tons of global sewage sludge are produced annually. Prior to 2013, the cost for sludge disposal accounted for nearly 50% of total wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) operating costs (Appels et al., 2011), representing up to 10 billion USD annually (Zhang et al., 2017b). To reduce this cost, various physical, chemical and biological processes can be applied. Among these, anaerobic digestion (AD) is considered as one of the most cost-effective alternatives for WAS treatment because of its ability to convert organic matter to biogas, especially methane (Appels et al., 2011). About 90% and 66% of sewage sludge are treated via AD in Germany and the UK, respectively (Tao et al., 2017).
According to recent studies (Auerbach et al., 2007, LaPara et al., 2011, Munir et al., 2011), proliferation of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) has become a serious threat to both animals and humans and a growing body of evidence has suggested that WWTPs are considered to be potential reservoirs of diverse ARGs because most ARGs-contaminated wastewater originate from livestock, agriculture, industry and hospitals. Moreover, environmental factors (e.g., high microbial diversity and nutrition) in WWTPs may promote the proliferation of ARGs through vertical or horizontal gene transfer (HGT) with mobile genetic elements such as plasmids, transposable elements or integrin-integrase gene cassettes (Schlüter et al., 2007). Results of the high-throughput sequencing approach has recently suggested that a large proportion of ARGs in WWTPs are concentrated in WAS (Yang et al., 2014). For these reasons, considerable attention has been paid to the efficient treatment of WAS via AD, especially, because it is considered essential to reduce environmental burdens as well as operating costs.
In a positive sense, large amounts of ARGs can be reduced by AD. Recently, significant efforts have been made to evaluate the effect of operating parameters on the removal of ARGs in AD. Diehl and LaPara (2010) reported that digestate from thermophilic AD (TAD) showed a lower quantity of genes encoding tetracycline resistance (tetA, tetL, tetO, tetW, tetX) and class 1 integrons (intI1) than that in mesophilic AD (MAD). Also, Ma et al. (2011) achieved more effective reduction of two erythromycin (ermB, ermF) and tetracycline (tetO, tetW) resistance genes in TAD compared to MAD. However, MAD showed higher removal of other resistance genes (sul1, sul2, tetC, tetG, tetX) and intI1 than that obtained in TAD. These results suggest that temperature is critical to determining the distribution of ARGs in AD, but their response to temperature in AD is not universal (Zhang et al., 2015). By extension, various effects by pretreatment (Ma et al., 2011, Zhang et al., 2016b) of AD or two-stage (acidogenic-methanogenic phase or different temperature phased) AD (Ghosh et al., 2009, Wu et al., 2016) on ARGs have been reported. However, understanding of the fate of different types of ARGs in temperature-phased anaerobic digestion (TPAD) is still limited, although the presence of three tetracycline resistance genes (tetA, tetO, tetX) and intI1 in TPAD has been reported by Ghosh et al. (2009).
Interestingly, experimental evidence indicates that heavy metals can exert selection pressure not only on heavy metal resistance genes (HMRGs) but also ARGs (Berg et al., 2010, Di Cesare et al., 2016, Seiler and Berendonk, 2012). There are two potential mechanisms involved in the co-selection of antibiotic and heavy metals resistance (Baker-Austin et al., 2006): (1) cross-resistance (genes share a common route of access to their respective targets) and (2) co-resistance (genes specifying resistant phenotypes are located together on the same genetic element such as a plasmid, transposon or integron). Considering the characteristics of domestic wastewater (i.e., generally higher concentration and lower degradability of heavy metals than for antibiotics) (Di Cesare et al., 2016), co-selection of resistance genes might be enhanced.
In this study, TPAD of WAS using two different sequences (i.e., MAD-TAD, TAD-MAD) was operated to investigate variations in ARGs, HMRGs and intI1. Using quantitative PCR (qPCR), twenty-one ARGs encoding tetracycline resistance (tetA, tetB, tetD, tetE, tetG, tetH, tetM, tetQ, tetX, tetZ, tetBP), sulfonamide resistance (sul1, sul2), quinolone resistance (qnrD, aac(6′)-Ib-cr), β-lactam antibiotics resistance (blaSHV, blaTEM, blaCTX), macrolide resistance (ermB), florfenicol resistance (floR) and multidrug resistance (oqxA) and intI1 were quantified. In addition, three HMRGs encoding copper resistance (copA, pcoA, tcrB) were quantified by qPCR. To gain insight into the potential mechanisms impacting the fate of ARGs, HMRGs and intI1 in TPAD, the bacterial community structure was characterized using high-throughput sequencing of 16S rRNA genes. To our knowledge, limited studies to date have reported the fates and co-occurrence of ARGs, HMRGs and intI1 during TPAD. Thus, current research is essential to obtain insight into the potential mechanisms of these genes in TPADs.
Section snippets
Preparation of WAS and inoculum
The highly concentrated WAS and inoculum used in this study were collected from the secondary clarifier and mesophilic anaerobic digester in a municipal wastewater treatment plant in Daegu, Korea. The physico-chemical characteristics of WAS and inoculum were as follows: pH 5.59 ± 0.11 and 7.24 ± 0.11; total solids (TS) 45.60 ± 0.28 and 24.33 ± 0.89 g/L; volatile solids (VS) 33.67 ± 0.09 and 16.21 ± 0.57 g/L; total chemical oxygen demand (TCOD) 48.34 ± 0.44 and 26.65 ± 0.13 g/L; soluble COD
Responses of ARGs, HMRGs and intI1 to TPAD
The profile of the residual gene for tetracycline resistance is shown in Fig. 1a. The abundance of tetH and tetBP decreased below the limit of quantification (LOQ) (4.35 × 102 copies/µL for tetH and 5.96 × 104 copies/µL for tetBP) after all types of AD in this study. In addition, abundance of tetE decreased below LOQ (4.67 × 103 copies/µL) in T1st and T2nd, but the residual gene fractions of tetE in M1st and M2nd were 0.59 and 0.50, respectively. Interestingly, proliferation and rebound (i.e.
Conclusion
Considering the abundance of total ARGs as well as the rebound of some ARGs after a mesophilic stage, the application of TAD as the final digestion stage of TPAD could be reasonable. However, in terms of iniI1, MAD as the final digestion stage of TPAD might be appropriate. An internal or external recycle could solve this dilemma. Given that TAD is usually used in the first stage of TPAD to achieve higher methane production, recycling digested sludge from M2nd to T1st might result in the
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by GIST Research Institute (GRI) grant funded by the GIST in 2018.
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- 1
Current affiliation: Texas A&M AgriLife Research Center, 1229 North US Highway 281, Stephenville, TX 76401, USA.
- 2
Current affiliation: Department of Surface Waters-Research and Management, Eawag: Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Kastanienbaum, Switzerland.