Maria Arias-Andres, Uli Klümper, Keilor Rojas-Jimenez, Hans-Peter Grossart

Volume 237, 2018, Pages 253-261, ISSN 0269-7491,

Abstract:

Pollution by microplastics in aquatic ecosystems is accumulating at an unprecedented scale,
emerging as a new surface for biofilm formation and gene exchange. In this study, we determined the
permissiveness of aquatic bacteria towards a model antibiotic resistance plasmid, comparing communities
that form biofilms on microplastics vs. those that are free-living.
We used an exogenous and red-fluorescent E. coli donor strain to introduce the green-fluorescent
broad-host-range plasmid pKJK5 which encodes for trimethoprim resistance. We demonstrate an increased frequency of plasmid transfer in bacteria associated with microplastics compared to bacteria that are
free-living or in natural aggregates. Moreover, comparison of communities grown on polycarbonate filters
showed that increased gene exchange occurs in a broad range of phylogenetically-diverse bacteria. Our results indicate horizontal gene transfer in this habitat could distinctly affect the ecology of aquatic microbial
communities on a global scale.
The spread of antibiotic resistance through microplastics could also have profound consequences for the evolution
of aquatic bacteria and poses a neglected hazard for human health.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1HbX9nqqON579PbGKYNYoE3MFciJLtVix

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2018.02.058.(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0269749117349990)