BIOCHAR ENHANCES ANTIBIOTIC-RESISTANT GENES REMOVAL FROM AQUEOUS ECOSYSTEMS.

Pollution of aquatic ecosystems with antibiotic-resistant genes originating from human medicine and veterinary is an urgent problem due to the potential threaten to public health. Antibiotic-resistant genes enter surface waters and wastewater through vertical and horizontal water runoff. At the same time, heavy metals and biogenic substances often presented in aqueous ecosystems often exacerbate the problem since the drive the horizontal transfer of antibiotic-resistance genes. To solve the problem of purification of waters from antibiotic-resistant genes, the adsorbing agents, such as biochar, might be used. In this work, we studied the effect of biochar on the dynamics of the content of tetracycline-resistant genes in a liquid LB medium with a microbial community transferred to the medium from compost. The following additives were used - Cu (600 μg*l^-1), Cd (130 μg*l^-1), Ni (70 μg*l^-1), Fe (1500 μg*l^-1), humic acids (6%), oxytetracycline (300 mg/l). Real-time PCR revealed the absence of the tet(O) gene both in all variants with and without biochar. The highest excesses over control were found for the tet(M) and tet(C) genes. The introduction of biochar made it possible to reduce the content of antibiotic-resistant genes in all samples with different additives. Thus, in the variant with Cd, the content of the tet(A), tet(B), tet(C) иtet(S) gene was eliminated. The tet(A), tet(E) иtet(S) genes were completely absent in the sample with antibiotic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]