Biotechnology

Biography

Biography: Alica Chroňáková

Abstract

Pharmaceuticals enter agricultural soils mainly with wastewater, manure and sewage sludge and potentially cause unknown biological effects on soil microbiota. We explored the structural and functional potential of the soil microbiome to respond on six pharmaceuticals and their mixture in seven agricultural soils in 1, 13 and 61 incubation days. Pharmaceuticals from different therapeutic classes highly abundant in effluents in the Czech Republic - Atenolol, Carbamazepine, Citalopram, Clarithromycin, Clindamycin, Fexofenadine, Irbesartan And Sulfamethoxazole, were used. Basal respiration was used to indicate the microbial activity, phospholipid fatty acids were used to determine microbial biomass, and  HTP sequencing of bacterial 16S rRNA gene to assess bacterial community structure. Four responses of pharmaceuticals on soil microbial community were observed: (i) stimulatory, (ii) inhibitory, (iii) stress and (iv) dormancy, which highly dependend on soil type. Antibiotics affected the bacterial alpha diversity, which increased with the amendment of sulfamethoxazole and decreased with clindamycin. However, we provide an evidence that non-antibiotic pharmaceuticals are capable of shifting microbial community along with their antibiotic counterparts. Simultaneously, we studied the parmaceutical biodegradation of microbial cultures to identify their metabolites and follow them in soil matrix using LC-HRMS. Single strain culture experiments did not mimic complex soil incubation experiments, as we identified completely different transformation products. Our findings indicated that microbial responses were highly dependent on the type of the soil, amended pharmaceuticals and incubation time, highlighting the importance of these parameters to be considered for long-term consequences of agricultural soil management and resilience of soil microbial communities to contaminants.