Occurrence and possible sources of antibiotic resistance genes in seawater of the South China Sea

Highlights

● The highest absolute abundance of ARGs in seawater reached 2.3 × 10⁴ copies/mL.

● Multidrug resistance genes were major ARGs in seawater of many sites.

● Insertion sequences were the dominant MGEs in seawater.

● Prochlorococcus _MIT9313 and Clade_la were the predominant genus in seawater.

● Anthropogenic activities had important effect on ARGs and MGEs.

Abstract

Antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) might have great effect on ecological security and human health. Oceans are important reservoirs that receive tremendous amounts of pollutants globally. However, information on the proliferation of ARGs in seawater is still limited. This study performed field sampling to investigate the occurrence and distribution of ARGs in seawater of the South China Sea, which is the deepest and largest sea in China. The results showed that the total absolute abundances of ARGs in seawater samples ranged from 2.1 × 10³ to 2.3 × 10⁴ copies/mL, with an of 5.0 × 10³ copies/mL and a range of 2.2 × 10³–1.8 × 10⁴ copies/mL for those with mobile genetic elements (MGEs). Genes resistant to multidrug, aminoglycoside, tetracycline, and fluoroquinolone antibiotics accounted for 77.3%–88.6% of total ARGs in seawater. Proteobacteria and Cyanobacteria represented 32.1%–56.2% and 30.4%–49.5% of microbial community, respectively. Prochlorococcus_MIT9313 and Clade_la were the prevalent genera in seawater of the South China Sea. Complex co-occurrence relationship existed among ARGs, MGEs, and bacteria. Anthropogenic activities had critical influence on ARGs and MGEs. Hospital wastewater, wastewater treatment plant effluent, sewage, aquaculture tailwater, and runoff were determined as the important sources of ARGs in seawater of the South China Sea based on positive matrix factorization analysis.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

The South China Sea / Antibiotic resistance genes / Mobile genetic element / Source apportionment

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 42276155), the Taishan Scholars Program, Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation (No. ZR2020QD131), the Research Program of CAS Key Laboratory of Coastal Environmental Processes and Ecological Remediation (No. 1189010002), and the Key R&D Program of Shandong Province, China (No. 2022CXPT019).

Conflict of Interests

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Electronic Supplementary Material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-024-1868-4 and is accessible for authorized users.

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