The Occurrence and Diversity of Antibiotic Resistance and Virulence Factor Genes in Wastewater from Four North American Treatment Plants

The spread of antibiotic resistance in aquatic environments is an emerging environmental issue due to potential threats to public health. Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) could serve as a sink for removal of antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB), antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs), and virulence factor genes (VFGs) from wastewater before discharge to the environment, or an amplifier because the stress conditions prevailing in sewage treatment processes may favor the proliferation of ARB, ARGs, and VFGs. In this study, we performed metagenomic sequencing and analyses to examine the diversity of microbial communities and the fate of ARGs, antibiotic biosynthesis genes (ABSGs) and VFGs in sixteen (16) sewage samples collected from four large WWTPs located at two major metropolitan centers on east and west coast of U.S.