Clouds have been found to contain microorganisms resistant to antibiotics.
Antibiotic resistance in bacteria is increasingly posing a threat to global public health. Antibiotic-resistant genes have been acquired by bacteria and have been widely dispersed in the environment as a result of the broad usage of antibiotics to support human activities.
Researchers from Laval University in Canada and the University of Clermont Auvergne in France have discovered that bacteria carrying antibiotic-resistance genes can spread widely through the atmosphere by taking samples of clouds at an atmospheric research station on top of the Puy de Dôme summit, a dormant volcano in France's Massif Central.
"This is the first study to show that clouds harbour antibiotic resistance genes of bacterial origin in concentrations comparable to other natural environments," said the study's lead author, Florent Rossi, a postdoctoral fellow at Laval who specialises in bioaerosols.
Over the course of two years, the scientists used high-flow rate "vacuums" to conduct 12 cloud sampling sessions. According to the analysis of these samples, each millilitre of cloud water contained, on average, 8,000 bacteria. Additionally, anywhere from five to fifty percent of them might be alive and possibly active.
These bacteria typically reside on the soil's or vegetation's surface. They are turned into aerosols by the wind or by human activity, and some of them rise into the atmosphere and help to create clouds, according to Rossi.
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Averaging 20,800 copies of antibiotic-resistance genes were found in clouds, or one million copies per millimetre of cloud water, according to the experts' analysis of this data, which also allowed them to measure the concentration of 29 sub-types of antibiotic-resistance genes found in atmospheric air masses.
"Antibiotic-resistance genes show distinct signatures in both continental and oceanic clouds. For instance, Rossi noted that continental clouds have higher levels of genes associated with antibiotic resistance in livestock.
The widespread use of antibiotics in agriculture and medicine has contributed significantly to the growth of these resistant strains and their wide-ranging distribution in the environment, despite the fact that airborne transmission of these genes is a natural phenomena.
Our research demonstrates that clouds play a significant role in the long- and short-range transmission of antibiotic resistance genes. To prevent the spread of these genes, we would like to identify human activity-related emission sources, Rossi said.
Science of the Total Environment is the publication where the paper has been published.
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