Soil bacterial consortia and previous exposure enhance the biodegradation of sulfonamides from pig manure

Persistence or degradation of synthetic antibiotics in soil is crucial in assessing their environmental risks. Microbial catabolic activity in a sandy loamy soil with pig manure using C-12- and C-14-labelled sulfamethazine (SMZ) respirometry showed that SMZ was not readily degradable. But after 100 days, degradation in sulfadiazine-exposed manure was 9.2%, far greater than soil and organic manure (0.5% and 0.11%, respectively, p < 0.05). Abiotic degradation was not detected suggesting microbial catabolism as main degradation mechanism. Terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism showed biodiversity increases within 1 day of SMZ spiking and especially after 200 days, although some species plummeted. A clone library from the treatment with highest degradation showed that most bacteria belonged to alpha, beta and gamma classes of Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes and Acidobacteria. Proteobacteria (alpha, beta and gamma), Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes which were the most abundant classes on day 1 also decreased most following prolonged exposure. From the matrix showing the highest degradation rate, 17 SMZ-resistant isolates biodegraded low levels of (14) C-labelled SMZ when each species was incubated separately (0.2-1.5%) but biodegradation was enhanced when the four isolates with the highest biodegradation were incubated in a consortium (Bacillus licheniformis, Pseudomonas putida, Alcaligenes sp. and Aquamicrobium defluvium as per 16S rRNA gene sequencing), removing up to 7.8% of SMZ after 20 days. One of these species (B. licheniformis) was a known livestock and occasional human pathogen. Despite an environmental role of these species in sulfonamide bioremediation, the possibility of horizontal transfer of pathogenicity and resistance genes should caution against an indiscriminate use of these species as sulfonamide degraders

Advanced Molecular Probes for Sequence-Specific DNA Recognition

DNA detection can be achieved using theWatson-Crick base pairing with oligonucleotides or oligonucleotide analogs, followed by generation of a physical or chemical signal coupled with a transducer device. The nature of the probe is an essential feature which determines the performances of the sensing device. Many synthetic processes are presently available for “molecular engineering” of DNA probes, enabling label-free and PCR-free detection to be performed. Furthermore, many DNA analogs with improved performances are available and are under development; locked nucleic acids (LNA), peptide nucleic acids (PNA) and their analogs, morpholino oligonucleotides (MO) and other modified probes have shown improved properties of affinity and selectivity in target recognition compared to those of simple DNA probes. The performances of these probes in sensing devices, and the requirements for detection of unamplified DNA will be discussed in this chapter. Chemistry and architectures for conjugation of probes to reporter units, surfaces and nanostructures will also be discussed. Examples of probes used in ultrasensitive detection of unamplified DNA are listed