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Prophylactic usage and high persistent nature of several antibiotics have put selective pressure on the native microbial population that led to the emergence, propagation, and persistence of antibiotic resistance in nature. The surveillance of antibiotic resistome pattern and identification of points of intervention throughout the different environmental habitats will help to break the flow of antibiotic resistance from environmental bacteria to human pathogens. The present study compares the occurrence, diversity, and abundance of ARGs in industrial sludge, wetland sludge, and sediment sample contaminated with pharmaceutical discharge. Metagenomes were mined for the presence of ARGs against the ResFinder 3.2 database using BLASTn program. Pharmaceutical sample (2.52%) showed high degree of ARG abundance and richness as compared with ETP sludge (2.28%) and wetland sludge samples (1.29%). The modern resistome pattern represented by critically important resistance genes against tetracycline (tetA, tetC, tetW, tetT, and tetS/M) and quinolone (qnrS, qnrVC, and qnrD) was identified in pharmaceutical sediment sample. However, effluent treatment plant (ETP) sludge sample showed abundance of multidrug efflux pumps indicating the presence of primitive resistome profile. In conclusion, the indiscriminate distribution pattern of antibiotic resistance genes in three selected environmental sites suggests enrichment and distribution of environmental niche–driven resistance. The study also suggests effluent discharge site from pharmaceutical industries and ETPs as pivotal points of intervention for the mitigation of antibiotic resistance.

The differential gene expression under phosphate stress conditions leads to cross-talk between the global regulator, pho regulon, and metabolic genes. Promoter activity analysis of the selected 23 genes reveals the dynamic nature of real-time gene expression under different phosphate conditions. The expression profiles of the global regulator (rpoD, soxR, soxS, arcB, and fur), pho regulon (phoH, phoR, phoB, and ugpB), and metabolic genes (sdh, pfkA, ldh) varied significantly on phosphate level variation. Under stress conditions, soxR switches expression partners and co-expresses with rpoS instead of soxS. The partner-switching behavior of the genes under a challenging environment represents the intelligence of functional execution and ensures cell survival. The dynamic expression profile of the selected genes applies a time-lagged correlation to provide insight into the differential gene interaction between time-shifted expression profiles. Under different phosphate conditions, the minimum spanning tree graph revealed a different clustering pattern of selected genes depending on the computed distance and its proximity to other promoters.

Microbes play a major role in phosphate cycling and regulate its availability in various environments. The metagenomic study highlights the microbial community divergence and interplay of phosphate metabolism functional genes in response to phosphate rich (100 mgL

Genome sequencing of Klebsiella pneumoniae PVN-1, isolated from effluent treatment plant (ETP), generates a 5.064 Mb draft genome with 57.6% GC content. The draft genome assembled into 19 contigs comprises 4783 proteins, 3 rRNA, 44 tRNA, 8 other RNA, 4911 genes, and 73 pseudogenes. Genome information revealed the presence of phosphate metabolism/solubilizing, potassium solubilizing, auxin production, and other plant benefiting attributes like enterobactin and pyrroloquinoline quinone biosynthesis genes. Presence of gcd and pqq genes in K. pneumoniae PVN-1 genome validates the inorganic phosphate solubilizing potential (528.5 mg/L). Pangenome analysis identified a unique 5ʹ-Nucleotidase that further assists in enhanced phosphate acquisition. Additionally, the genetic potential for complete benzoate, catechol, and phenylacetate degradation with stress response and heavy metal (Cu, Zn, Ni, Co) resistance was identified in K. pneumoniae PVN-1. Functioning of annotated plant benefiting genes validates by the metabolic activity of auxin production (7.40 µg/mL), nitrogen fixation, catalase activity, potassium solubilization (solubilization index—3.47), and protease activity (proteolytic index—2.27). In conclusion, the K. pneumoniae PVN-1 genome has numerous beneficial qualities that can be employed to enhance plant growth as well as for phytoremediation. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13205-021-03020-2.

This Sewage environment monitoring system using Internet of Things along with the fusion of Machine Learning has been proposed as a solution to help the sewer workers who put their lives in jeopardy, and ensure minimal health risk. Many sanitation workers had suffered serious health concerns at an early age and have lost their lives due to being continuously exposed to toxic surroundings of drainage, Different kinds of work have been done to detect, maintain and manage the drainage system but very few have been done for protecting the lives of people who do it. The objective of this monitoring system is to obtain an effective low-cost and flexible solution for checking and keeping an update using sensors and collecting and analyzing data using the Internet of Things and Machine Learning. This system is based on the perusal of real-time data provided by the wireless sensor network which generates huge amount of data; this data is then processed by the microcontroller and depicted on the cloud. The data obtained on the cloud is then used by Machine Learning Model for further systematic analysis making smart use of this massive volume of data in order to predict the condition of the worker with considerable reliability and accuracy.

Prophylactic usage and high persistent nature of several antibiotics have put selective pressure on the native microbial population that led to the emergence, propagation, and persistence of antibiotic resistance in nature. The surveillance of antibiotic resistome pattern and identification of points of intervention throughout the different environmental habitats will help to break the flow of antibiotic resistance from environmental bacteria to human pathogens. The present study compares the occurrence, diversity, and abundance of ARGs in industrial sludge, wetland sludge, and sediment sample contaminated with pharmaceutical discharge. Metagenomes were mined for the presence of ARGs against the ResFinder 3.2 database using BLASTn program. Pharmaceutical sample (2.52%) showed high degree of ARG abundance and richness as compared with ETP sludge (2.28%) and wetland sludge samples (1.29%). The modern resistome pattern represented by critically important resistance genes against tetracycline (tetA, tetC, tetW, tetT, and tetS/M) and quinolone (qnrS, qnrVC, and qnrD) was identified in pharmaceutical sediment sample. However, effluent treatment plant (ETP) sludge sample showed abundance of multidrug efflux pumps indicating the presence of primitive resistome profile. In conclusion, the indiscriminate distribution pattern of antibiotic resistance genes in three selected environmental sites suggests enrichment and distribution of environmental niche-driven resistance. The study also suggests effluent discharge site from pharmaceutical industries and ETPs as pivotal points of intervention for the mitigation of antibiotic resistance.

This article explores the literary and the extra-literary modes of reading a graphic-novel retelling of the Mahabharata. Applying the theories of Scott McCloud and Neil Cohn, this article attempts ...

Pho regulon is a highly evolved and conserved mechanism across the microbes to fulfil their phosphate need. In this study, 52 proteobacteria genomes were analyzed for the presence of phosphorus acquisition genes, their pattern of arrangement and copy numbers. The diverse genetic architecture of the Pho regulon genes indicates the evolutionary challenge of nutrient limitation, particularly phosphorus, faced by bacteria in their environment. The incongruence between the Pho regulon proteins phylogeny and species phylogeny along with the presence of additional copies of pstS and pstB genes, having cross similarity with other genera, suggest the possibility of horizontal gene transfer event. The substitution rate analysis and multiple sequence alignment of the Pho regulon proteins were analyzed to gain additional insight into the evolution of the Pho regulon system. This comprehensive study confirms that genes perform the regulatory function (phoBR) were vertically inherited, whereas interestingly, genes whose product involved in direct interaction with the environment (pstS) acquired by horizontal gene transfer. The substantial amino acid substitutions in PstS most likely contribute to the successful adaptation of bacteria in different ecological condition dealing with different phosphorus availability. The findings decipher the intelligence of the bacteria which enable them to carry out the targeted alteration of genes to cope up with the environmental condition.

The phosphorus availability in soil ranged from

Inefficient wastewater treatment introduces huge amount of nutrients mainly phosphorus and nitrogen to the natural waterbodies. Excessive phosphate in the water leads to the growth of algae or eutrophication. One-third of the aquatic ecology has been destroyed by eutrophication worldwide including China, Japan, Europe, South Asia and South Africa. Artificial eutrophication affects the water ecology around the world by decreasing the quality standards of water and alters the ecosystem structure and function. Phosphorus is known to be a limiting factor, and it is crucial to remove the phosphate from the effluent prior to exoneration into waterbodies.

The inherent safety intervention framework (ISIF) was developed to integrate the inherent safety level assessment methods to the process simulation tools. This framework is considered as a major breakthrough in the development of inherently safe design. In this framework, the best process route is selected by using the Process Route Index (PRI), and the inherent safety level of all process streams is estimated by using Process Stream Index (PSI). Moreover, the worst stream is identified on the basis of the highest magnitude of PSI. However, benchmarking of the worst stream is difficult to predict by using the original ISIF. In this work, a benchmarking criteria for a worst process stream is established through risk assessment. This reform could potentially improve the reliability of the original ISIF.