Journal article

Triclosan at environmentally relevant concentrations promotes horizontal transfer of multidrug resistance genes within and across bacterial genera

Ji Lu, Yue Wang, Jie Li, Likai Mao, Son Hoang Nguyen, Tania Duarte, Lachlan Coin, Philip Bond, Zhiguo Yuan, Jianhua Guo

ENVIRONMENT INTERNATIONAL | PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD | Published : 2018

Open access

Abstract

Background Antibiotic resistance poses an increasing threat to public health. Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) promoted by antibiotics is recognized as a significant pathway to disseminate antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). However, it is unclear whether non-antibiotic, anti-microbial (NAAM) chemicals can directly promote HGT of ARGs in the environment. Objectives We aimed to investigate whether triclosan (TCS), a widely-used NAAM chemical in personal care products, is able to stimulate the conjugative transfer of antibiotic multi-resistance genes carried by plasmid within and across bacterial genera. Methods We established two model mating systems, to investigate intra-genera transfer and ..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Grants

Awarded by Australian Research Council


Funding Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the Australian Research Council for funding support through Jianhua Guo's Future Fellowship (FT170100196). Jianhua Guo would like to thank the support by UQ Foundation Research Excellence Awards. E. coli K-12 LE392 strain with RP4 plasmid was kindly donated by Professor Mark Walker from The University of Queensland. We thank Dr. Michael Nefedov of The University of Queensland for assistance with the BD FACSAria (TM) II flow cytometer and data analysis. The MIC measurement in this work was performed at the Queensland node of the Australian National Fabrication Facility.