Broad Dissemination of Plasmids across Groundwater-Fed Rapid Sand Filter Microbiomes

Rafael Pinilla-Redondo, Asmus Kalckar Olesen, Jakob Russel, Lisbeth Elvira de Vries, Lisbeth Damkjær Christensen, Sanin Musovic, Joseph Nesme*, Søren Johannes Sørensen*

*Corresponding author af dette arbejde

Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskriftTidsskriftartikelForskningpeer review

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Abstract

Biological rapid sand filtration is a commonly employed method for the removal of organic and inorganic impurities in water which relies on the degradative properties of microorganisms for the removal of diverse contaminants, but their bioremediation capabilities vary greatly across waterworks. Bioaugmentation efforts with degradation-proficient bacteria have proven difficult due to the inability of the exogenous microbes to stably colonize the sand filters. Plasmids are extrachromosomal DNA elements that can often transfer between bacteria and facilitate the flow of genetic information across microbiomes, yet their ability to spread within rapid sand filters has remained unknown. Here, we examine the permissiveness of rapid sand filter communities toward four environmentally transmissible plasmids, RP4, RSF1010, pKJK5, and TOL (pWWO), using a dual-fluorescence bioreporter platform combined with fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) and 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. Our results reveal that plasmids can transfer at high frequencies and across distantly related taxa from rapid sand filter communities, emphasizing their potential suitability for introducing bioremediation determinants in the microbiomes of underperforming water purification plants.

OriginalsprogEngelsk
Artikelnummere0306821
TidsskriftmBio
Vol/bind12
Udgave nummer6
Antal sider13
ISSN2161-2129
DOI
StatusUdgivet - 2021

Bibliografisk note

Funding Information:
Financial support for this project was provided by the Innovation Fund Denmark Trojan Horse Project (grant 5157-00005B), the Independent Research Fund Denmark InTrans Project (grant 8022-00322B), and the Joint Programming Initiative-Antimicrobial Resistance (JPI-AMR) DARWIN Project (grant 7044-00004B). J.R. was supported by the Novo Nordisk Foundation (grant NNF17OC0025014). We declare that we have no known competing interests.

Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2021 Pinilla-Redondo et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

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