Ultraviolet Disinfection of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria and Their Antibiotic Resistance Genes in Water and Wastewater

Disinfection of wastewater treatment plant effluent may be an important barrier for limiting the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARBs) and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). While ideally disinfection should destroy ARGs, to prevent horizontal gene transfer to downstream bacteria, little is known about the effect of conventional water disinfection technologies on ARGs. This study examined the potential of UV disinfection to damage four ARGs, mec(A), van(A), tet(A), and amp(C), both in extracellular form and present within a host ARBs: methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium (VRE), Escherichia coli SMS-3-5, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa 01, respectively. An extended amplicon-length quantitative polymerase chain reaction assay was developed to enhance capture of ARG damage events and also to normalize to an equivalent length of target DNA (∼1000 bp) for comparison. It was found that the two Gram-positive ARBs (MRSA and VRE) were more resistant to UV disinfection than the two Gram-negative ARBs (E. coli and P. aeruginosa). The two Gram-positive organisms also possessed smaller total genome sizes, which could also have reduced their susceptibility to UV because of fewer potential pyrimidine dimer targets. An effect of cell type on damage to ARGs was only observed in VRE and P. aeruginosa, the latter potentially because of extracellular polymeric substances. In general, damage of ARGs required much greater UV doses (200–400 mJ/cm2 for 3- to 4-log reduction) than ARB inactivation (10–20 mJ/cm2 for 4- to 5-log reduction). The proportion of amplifiable ARGs following UV treatment exhibited a strong negative correlation with the number of adjacent thymines (Pearson r < −0.9; p < 0.0001). ARBs surviving UV treatment were negatively correlated with total genome size (Pearson r < −0.9; p < 0.0001) and adjacent cytosines (Pearson r < −0.88; p < 0.0001) but positively correlated with adjacent thymines (Pearson r > 0.85; p < 0.0001). This suggests that formation of thymine dimers is not the sole mechanism of ARB inactivation. Overall, the results indicate that UV is limited in its potential to damage ARGs and other disinfection technologies should be explored.