ABSTRACT
Chlorine-containing disinfectants have been widely used around the world for the prevention and control of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, at present, little is known about the impact of residual chlorine on the soil micro-ecological environment. Herein, we treated an experimental soil-plant-microbiome microcosm system by continuous irrigation with a low concentration of chlorine-containing water, and then analyzed the influence on the soil microbial community using metagenomics. After 14-d continuous chlorine treatment, there were no significant lasting effect on soil microbial community diversity and composition either in the rhizosphere or in bulk soil. Although metabolic functions of the rhizosphere microbial community were affected slightly by continuous chlorine treatment, it recovered to the original status. The abundance of several resistance genes changed by 7 d and recovered by 14 d. According to our results, the chlorine residue resulting from daily disinfection may present a slight long-term effect on plant growth (shoot length and fresh weight) and soil micro-ecology. In general, our study assisted with environmental risk assessments relating to the application ofchlorine-containing disinfectants and minimization of risks to the environment during disease control, such as COVID-19. © 2022, Higher Education Press.
ABSTRACT
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is among the top 10 global public health threats. Antimicrobial overuse in part because of the overload of ICU departments in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic facilitates the phenomenon. Designing novel effective antimicrobial strategies necessitates the development of new methodologies of antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) instead of routinely used laboratory approaches that do not consider recent findings concerning the crucial impact of structural complexity inherent for macroorganism tissues, and physical characteristics of the environment on microbial population behavior and biological properties. Liquid crystal (LC) materials combining properties of both the liquid and the solid phase offer tremendous potential for the development of various spatially structured liquid model environments and solid surfaces for studying tripartite system bacterium-antibiotic-bacteriophage. Our pilot study was aimed to examine the behavior of the population of Proteus vulgaris ? the representative of the third most common etiological factor of nosocomial and catheter-associated urinary tract infections ? in different microcosms based on a lyotropic nematic liquid crystal. The study design included examining the bacterial growth, motility, and morphology under the transition of pre-grown population from different isotropic nutrient media to anisotropic microcosms based on LC. Growth kinetics, motility pattern as well as morphotype conversion from swimmers to swarmers changed significantly after the transition of the bacterial population to different microcosms based on LC as compared to those in isotropic conditions. The significance of swarming motility and swarming-specific induction of the virulence factors of Proteus for its pathogenicity and AMR has been debated widely yet remains unclear. Our findings indicate the attractiveness of artificial spatially structured microcosms based on LC for the study of these phenomena.