[2S05m] 12. Environmental Microbiology and Technology - Part 1

10:30 AM - 11:00 AM JST(1:30 AM - 2:00 AM UTC)

[2EMT-03-KL] Antibiotic resistance in the environment - monitoring, mechanisms and processes

○Thomas Ulrich Berendonk¹ (1. TU Dresden Institute of Hydrobiology (Germany))

Keywords:

antimicrobial resistance,environment,microbiology,wastewater,surveilance

This presentation examines antibiotic resistance in the environment as an ecological and public-health problem, with a focus on the mechanisms that generate resistance, the pathways that spread it, and the methods available for environmental surveillance. It first outlines how antibiotics act and how bacteria evade them through target modification, drug inactivation, efflux, and metabolic bypass, emphasizing the role of mobile genetic elements and horizontal gene transfer in accelerating resistance evolution across bacterial communities. It then shifts to environmental dissemination, highlighting wastewater treatment plants, receiving waters, and other human-impacted systems as important reservoirs and exchange zones for resistant bacteria and antibiotic resistance genes. Case studies from Dresden, broader European comparisons, airport and aircraft wastewater, and tourism-associated sampling in Guadeloupe illustrate how resistance signatures can reflect antibiotic use, healthcare burden, mobility, and global connectivity. The presentation argues that culture-based assays and resistance-gene quantification currently offer the most practical monitoring strategy, while also noting major unresolved questions around species-plasmid-gene dynamics and multidrug resistance. Overall, it advocates a coordinated One Health surveillance framework to better track, interpret, and manage environmental antibiotic resistance.[