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Dynamic evolution of the antibiotic resistome and mobilome on the microplastics of hospital wastewater
Summary
Tiny plastic bits floating in hospital wastewater aren't just pollution—they're becoming breeding grounds for antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Researchers found that over four weeks, these microplastics accumulated genes that help bacteria resist antibiotics and swap that resistance with each other, essentially acting as floating training grounds for superbugs. Since hospital wastewater often ends up back in our environment, this matters because it could be helping drug-resistant infections spread more easily, making future infections harder to treat.
Antimicrobial resistance is a major global health threat. Hospital wastewater serves as a significant reservoir for both microplastics (MPs) and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). MPs have recently been recognized not only as persistent pollutants but also as novel ecological niches for microbial colonization. However, the underlying mechanisms and key biological carriers driving MPs - mediated antimicrobial resistance transmission in hospital wastewater remain unclear. Here, we quantified the occurrence and characteristics of MPs in hospital wastewater and combined an incubation experiment with metagenomic sequencing to resolve the temporal dynamics of ARGs, mobile genetic elements (MGEs), and virulence factors (VFs) on MPs surfaces. MPs reached an abundance of 9.5 particles/L, with polyethylene (PE) dominating. Across the 28-day colonization period, with samples collected at 7, 14, 21, and 28 days, 68 ARGs, 443 MGEs and 414 VFs were detected, along with 129 prophage, highlighting the potential for enhanced horizontal gene transfer (HGT) in the plastisphere. We further reconstructed 360 metagenome-assembled genome (MAGs) spanning 16 phyla, and identified Pseudomonadota and Bacteroidota as core hosts of ARGs on MPs. Variance partitioning analysis revealed that MGEs were the major drivers of ARGs variation, independently explaining 44.4% of the dynamics. Our findings provide new insights into the ecological processes of antibiotic resistome of the MPs in the hospital wastewater.