Fifteen-Year Application of Manure and Chemical Fertilizers Differently Impacts Soil ARGs and Microbial Community Structure

Frontiers in Microbiology

Shuaimin Chen¹  Chunsheng Hu²  Binbin Liu²  Wenxu Dong²  Fenghua Wang²  Min Qiao³  Wanxue Han⁴ 

[1] Institute of Agricultural Resource and Environment, Jilin Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Changchun, China;Key Laboratory of Agricultural Water Resources, Hebei Key Laboratory of Soil Ecology, Center for Agricultural Resources Research, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shijiazhuang, China;State Key Lab of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China;University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China;

关键词: antibiotic resistance genes;    mobile genetic elements;    manure;    chemical fertilizer;    microbial community structure;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fmicb.2020.00062

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Manure, which contains large amounts of antibiotics and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs), is widely used in agricultural soils and may lead to the evolution and dispersal of ARGs in the soil environment. In the present study, soils that received manure or chemical fertilizers for 15 years were sampled on the North China Plain (NCP), which is one of the primary areas of intensive agriculture in China. High-throughput quantitative PCR and sequencing technologies were employed to assess the effects of long-term manure or chemical fertilizer application on the distribution of ARGs and microbial communities. A total of 114 unique ARGs were successfully amplified from all soil samples. Manure application markedly increased the relative abundance and detectable numbers of ARGs, with up to 0.23 copies/16S rRNA gene and 81 unique ARGs. The increased abundance of ARGs in manure-fertilized soil was mainly due to the manure increasing the abundance of indigenous soil ARGs. In contrast, chemical fertilizers only moderately affected the diversity of ARGs and had no significant effect on the relative abundance of the total ARGs. In addition, manure application increased the abundance of mobile genetic elements (MGEs), which were significantly and positively correlated with most types of ARGs, indicating that horizontal gene transfer via MGEs may play an important role in the spread of ARGs. Furthermore, the application of manure and chemical fertilizers significantly affected microbial community structure, and variation partitioning analysis showed that microbial community shifts represented the major driver shaping the antibiotic resistome. Taken together, our results provide insight into the long-term effects of manure and chemical fertilization on the dissemination of ARGs in intensive agricultural ecosystems.

【 授权许可】

Unknown