Christian Hiller

TL;DR: The occurrence and transport of antibiotic microbial resistance in the urban water cycle are critically reviewed and the presence of antibiotic resistance in low impacted surface water is discussed to determine background antibiotic resistance levels, which might serve as a reference for treatment targets in the absence of health-based threshold levels.

TL;DR: Seven wastewater treatment plants with different population equivalents and catchment areas were screened for the prevalence of the colistin resistance gene mcr-1 mediating resistance against last resort antibiotic polymyxin E.coli, and opportunistic pathogens and clinically relevant antibiotic resistance genes in wastewaters of the analyzed WWTPs bear a risk of dissemination to the aquatic environment.

TL;DR: The dimerization or potential other DNA alterations during UV treatment might be responsible for a decreased PCR efficiency of the 16S rRNA amplicons from natural metagenomes compared to the untreated sample and this impact on PCR efficiencies was also observed for the combination of ozone and UV treatment.

TL;DR: Conventional wastewater treatment is not sufficient for the removal of hygienically relevant bacteria and achieves only limited reductions, so metagenome analyses demonstrated the accumulation of facultative pathogenic bacteria, antibiotic resistance genes, virulence factor genes, and metabolic gene targets in the back flush retentates of the membranes, which opens further questions about retentate fluid material handling at urban wastewater treatment plants.

TL;DR: Results comparing conventional cultivation experiments with PMA-qPCR underlined the presence of viable but not culturable cells (VBNC) and their regrowth potential after ozone treatment and the importance of PMA treatment for the evaluation of elimination and selection processes during ozonation at WWTPs.