14 Apr. 2016 - Giuliana Manfredini

The impact of disturbance factors on a lake microbial community in a continuous culture system

Presenta: Giuliana Manfredini

Università degli Studi di Milano

Antibiotics (ABs) are the most efficient treatment available against infections. Unfortunately, their massive use and general misuse in the last century reduced their efficiency. A strong correlation between human activities and the amount of ABs recovered in aquatic environments has been demonstrated. Better knowledge on the cycle of ABs in the environment is needed to understand the role of the environment in the promotion, persistence and spread of AB resistances. A continuous culture system (chemostat) experiment has been designed to evaluate the impact of low-dose AB pollution and of allochthonous
species on the natural microbial community of Lake Maggiore. Tetracycline (TET; one of the most used ABs in the last 50 years) and a population of Escherichiacoli (a faecal indicator bacterium) were introduced at two time points in the experiment. Our study demonstrates that the lake microbial community is
sensitive to the introduction of TET, that promotes an immediate effect on its aggregational behaviour.

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