Our lab was proud to be part of a nationwide project led by the EPA and the Water Research Foundation investigating antibiotic resistance in wastewater influent and the receiving environment. 

 

Our role in the project was focused on estimating the degree to which WWTP effluent- and biosolid-borne antibiotic resistant bacteria (ARB) and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) attenuate or amplify in the environment. To do this, we sampled the treated effluent and the receiving waters at two advanced wastewater treatment plants in our area. We then filtered for three types of bacteria, Escherichia coli, enterococci, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. We filtered for both total and antibiotic resistant strains of these bacteria, and collect water for metagenomic analysis.

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The purpose of this was to give us an idea of how many ARB survive through treatment and are present in the receiving waters, and the metagenomic analysis would ideally provide insight to ARGs in treated effluent and the environment.

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As part of this project, we created an instructional video on how to culture from water and sediment samples. ​