Following Antibiotic Resistance Through Wastewater Treatment in Three States

What happens to antibiotic resistance after it goes down the drain? Water reclamation facilities take in a complex mix of antibiotics and rely on living microbial communities to clean the water, which makes them key places to stop resistance from spreading into the environment. Resistance genes often travel on plasmids, mobile pieces of DNA that are hard to trace back to the bacteria carrying them. Using Hi-C sequencing, which physically links plasmids to their hosts, PreMiEr researcher Jeseth Delgado Vela and collaborators followed resistance through treatment at facilities in North Carolina, Texas and California. They identified 244 unique resistance genes, seven of which showed up in every sample, and found resistant bacteria carrying plasmid based genes in some treated water leaving the plants. Published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, the work helps pinpoint where resistance survives treatment and where interventions could make the biggest difference.

Read more here: https://doi.org/10.1128/aem.00701-26