SIPIBEL tpm - impact of hospital and domestic wastewaters on bTPMT+ bacterial communities

Hospital wastewaters are highly contaminated by drugs, antiseptics, detergents and biocides. These waters represent a supportive environment for genetic exchanges between bacterial species including pathogens. A bacterial enzyme, the Thiopurine-S-Methyltransferase (TPMT), encoded by the tpm gene, could be involved in the detoxification of some of these molecules. This can explain the Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Aeromonas caviae occurrence. To verify this hypothesis, the diversity of tpm gene in bacterial biofilm presents in a wastewater epuration station was compared. These biofilms have been developed in the urban or hospital treatment files. After tpm amplicons amplification and NGS sequencing, the tpm OTUs occurrence was compared with the measured drugs concentrations. These OTUs could be classified within certain bacterial taxa. This allowed to observe an association between tpm sequences number affilied with P. putida and A. caviae present in the hospital biofilms, and the presence of certain drugs.