Early Life Exposure to Manure-Fertilized Soil Shapes the Gut Antibiotic Resistome.

The global rise of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) presents a pressing public health challenge with agricultural practices such as the use of manure fertilization, excessive antibiotic use in livestock, and the irrigation of crops with contaminated water contributing to the spread of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). Despite growing concerns, the pathways through which ARGs migrate from environmental reservoirs to animal microbiomes are poorly understood. In this study, we raised mice from birth in pig manure-fertilized red (Ultisols) and black (Mollisols) soils or unfertilized controls, sampling their gut microbiomes at 8 weeks, to show that early life exposure to manure-fertilized soil profoundly shapes the gut antibiotic resistome in mice.

Soil redox status governs within-field spatial variation in microbial arsenic methylation and rice straighthead disease.

Microbial arsenic (As) methylation in paddy soil produces mainly dimethylarsenate (DMA), which can cause physiological straighthead disease in rice. The disease is often highly patchy in the field, but the reasons remain unknown. We investigated within-field spatial variations in straighthead disease severity, As species in rice husks and in soil porewater, microbial composition and abundance of arsM gene encoding arsenite S-adenosylmethionine methyltransferase in two paddy fields.

Two-tiered mutualism improves survival and competitiveness of cross-feeding soil bacteria.

Metabolic cross-feeding is a pervasive microbial interaction type that affects community stability and functioning and directs carbon and energy flows. The mechanisms that underlie these interactions and their association with metal/metalloid biogeochemistry, however, remain poorly understood. Here, we identified two soil bacteria, Bacillus sp.

Dietary intake of household cadmium-contaminated rice caused genome-wide DNA methylation changes on gene/hubs related to metabolic disorders and cancers.

Cadmium (Cd) contamination in food has raised broad concerns in food safety and human health. The toxicity of Cd to animals/humans have been widely reported, yet little is known about the health risk of dietary Cd intake at the epigenetic level. Here, we investigated the effect of a household Cd-contaminated rice (Cd-rice) on genome-wide DNA methylation (DNAm) changes in the model mouse.