Determining Toxic Potencies of Water-Soluble Contaminants in Wastewater Influents and Effluent Using Gene Expression Profiling in C. elegans as a Bioanalytical Tool.

With chemical analysis, it is impossible to qualify and quantify the toxic potency of especially hydrophilic bioactive contaminants. In this study, we applied the nematode C. elegans as a model organism for detecting the toxic potency of whole influent wastewater samples. Gene expression in the nematode was used as bioanalytical tool to reveal the presence, type and potency of molecular pathways induced by 24-h exposure to wastewater from a hospital (H), nursing home (N), community (C), and influent (I) and treated effluent (E) from a local wastewater treatment plant. Exposure to influent water significantly altered expression of 464 genes, while only two genes were differentially expressed in nematodes treated with effluent. This indicates a significant decrease in bioactive pollutant-load after wastewater treatment. Surface water receiving the effluent did not induce any genes in exposed nematodes. A subset of 209 genes was differentially expressed in all untreated wastewaters, including cytochromes P450 and C-type lectins related to the nematode's xenobiotic metabolism and immune response, respectively. Different subsets of genes responded to particular waste streams making them candidates to fingerprint-specific wastewater sources. This study shows that gene expression profiling in C. elegans can be used for mechanism-based identification of hydrophilic bioactive compounds and fingerprinting of specific wastewaters. More comprehensive than with chemical analysis, it can demonstrate the effective overall removal of bioactive compounds through wastewater treatment. This bioanalytical tool can also be applied in the process of identification of the bioactive compounds via a process of toxicity identification evaluation.

Effects of Clinical Wastewater on the Bacterial Community Structure from Sewage to the Environment.

This study pertains to measure differences in bacterial communities along the wastewater pathway, from sewage sources through the environment. Our main focus was on taxa which include pathogenic genera, and genera harboring antibiotic resistance (henceforth referred to as "target taxa"). Our objective was to measure the relative abundance of these taxa in clinical wastewaters compared to non-clinical wastewaters, and to investigate what changes can be detected along the wastewater pathway. The study entailed a monthly sampling campaign along a wastewater pathway, and taxa identification through 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing. Results indicated that clinical and non-clinical wastewaters differed in their overall bacterial composition, but that target taxa were not enriched in clinical wastewater. This suggests that treatment of clinical wastewater before release into the wastewater system would only remove a minor part of the potential total pathogen load in wastewater treatment plants. Additional findings were that the relative abundance of most target taxa was decreased after wastewater treatment, yet all investigated taxa were detected in 68% of the treated effluent samples-meaning that these bacteria are continuously released into the receiving surface water. Temporal variation was only observed for specific taxa in surface water, but not in wastewater samples.

Abundance and Antimicrobial Resistance of Three Bacterial Species along a Complete Wastewater Pathway.

After consumption, antibiotic residues and exposed bacteria end up via the feces in wastewater, and therefore wastewater is believed to play an important role in the spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). We investigated the abundance and AMR profiles of three different species over a complete wastewater pathway during a one-year sampling campaign, as well as including antimicrobial consumption and antimicrobial concentrations analysis. A total of 2886 isolates (997 Escherichia coli, 863 Klebsiella spp., and 1026 Aeromonas spp.) were cultured from the 211 samples collected. The bacterial AMR profiles mirrored the antimicrobial consumption in the respective locations, which were highest in the hospital. However, the contribution of hospital wastewater to AMR found in the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) was below 10% for all antimicrobials tested. We found high concentrations (7-8 logs CFU/L) of the three bacterial species in all wastewaters, and they survived the wastewater treatment (effluent concentrations were around 5 log CFU/L), showing an increase of E. coli in the receiving river after the WWTP discharge. Although the WWTP had no effect on the proportion of AMR, bacterial species and antimicrobial residues were still measured in the effluent, showing the role of wastewater contamination in the environmental surface water.

Noncoding RNA of glutamine synthetase I modulates antibiotic production in Streptomyces coelicolor A3(2).

Overexpression of antisense chromosomal cis-encoded noncoding RNAss (ncRNAs) in glutamine synthetase I resulted in a decrease in growth, protein synthesis, and antibiotic production in Streptomyces coelicolor. In addition, we predicted 3,597 cis-encoded ncRNAs and validated 13 of them experimentally, including several ncRNAs that are differentially expressed in bacterial hormone-defective mutants.