Antibiotics and Antibiotic Resistance Genes and Their Management in Organic Wastes

Abstract

The world population is growing rapidly, and consequently, the increased need for healthy food and appropriate hygiene requires more effort to produce and employ medicinal and antimicrobial substances. Antibiotics are the most commonly used pharmaceuticals, but there is a significant concern with their incomplete metabolism in both human and animal bodies, as well as with the effectiveness of conventional methods for completely removing them from wastewater treatment plants. The excessive use of antibiotics causes a continuous and uncontrollable release of them into the soil and aquatic environments through household waste, animal manures, sewage treatment facilities, and hospital wastewater. These bioactive materials extensively persist in different environments due to the complexity of the removal processes. Antibiotics cause a discriminating pressure on various microbial groups and communities and lead to the establishment of antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB) harboring antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). Hence, understanding the fate of antibiotics in the environment and identification of ARGs is crucial to mitigate or prevent the distribution of antibiotic-resistant microorganisms. Numerous studies have been done to scrutinize the efficiency of several physiochemical and biological techniques for managing and eliminating different antibiotics and ARGs. Among different physicochemical treatment methods, filtration, Fenton reaction, ozonation, and chlorination are broadly employed for antibiotic removal. Moreover, biological methods are alternatives to these conventional approaches, in which plants, microorganisms, and biocatalysts play a key role in the bioremediation or biodegradation of antibiotics. This chapter discusses antibiotic and ARGs pollution and techniques for removing these pollutants. We discussed bioremediation as an effective strategy to access a conceptual understanding of the microbial communities' structure and their abilities to remove antibiotics, as well as related genomes, in order to provide comprehensive maps for the identification of ARB and ARGs in the environments by metagenomics technique as a culture- and amplification-independent method.