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SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article

Front. Microbiomes
Sec. Environmental Microbiomes
Volume 3 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/frmbi.2024.1490240
This article is part of the Research Topic Interactions Between Natural and Built Environment Microbiomes in a One Health Context View all 4 articles

Quantifying conjugation rates in clinical and environmental matrices: A systematic review to inform risk assessment

Provisionally accepted
Hunter Quon Hunter Quon 1Lucia Ramirez Lucia Ramirez 2Blakeley Bagwell Blakeley Bagwell 3Jennifer Moralez Jennifer Moralez 3Richard Sheppard Richard Sheppard 4Allison Lopatkin Allison Lopatkin 5Kerry Ann Hamilton Kerry Ann Hamilton 1*
  • 1 Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, United States
  • 2 North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, United States
  • 3 Barnard College, Columbia University, New York City, New York, United States
  • 4 Medical Research Council Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Imperial College London, London, England, United Kingdom
  • 5 University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has become a major public health concern and challenge. The transfer of antibiotic resistance genes (ARG) between bacteria and the movement of antibiotic resistant bacteria (ARB) between human, environmental, and animal reservoirs allows AMR to spread and drive its persistence. Modelling efforts are useful for providing understanding of fate and transport, dynamics, or probabilistic risk, but lack estimates of bacterial conjugation parameters to be used within these frameworks. A systematic literature review was conducted to summarize measured rates of conjugation for AMR and other resistances across a variety of settings, experimental media, and donor sources. Across the 113 studies, reported conjugation frequencies and rates were examined in environmental, clinical, and animal/agricultural settings. The findings spanned over 12 orders of magnitude. From all studies, a subset of 25 were able to be analyzed for time-dependent rate estimation, which is most useful in modeling approaches. The highest rates were found in samples originating from wastewater sources or transferred in wastewater matrices, pointing to the significance and role of anthropogenic impacts on the environment in dissemination of AMR. The results allowed us to identify knowledge gaps in measuring conjugation rates in key environmental exposure areas, such as biofilms, and in reporting experimental outputs for understanding cell growth and conjugation dynamics, such as donor, recipient and transconjugant densities over time.

    Keywords: horizontal gene transfer, conjugation, antimicrobial resistance, Risk Assessment, wastewater

    Received: 02 Sep 2024; Accepted: 26 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Quon, Ramirez, Bagwell, Moralez, Sheppard, Lopatkin and Hamilton. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Kerry Ann Hamilton, Arizona State University, Tempe, 85281, Arizona, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.