Abundant resistome determinants in rhizosphere soil of the wild plant Abutilon fruticosum

A metagenomic whole genome shotgun sequencing approach was used for rhizospheric soil micribiome of the wild plant Abutilon fruticosum in order to detect antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) along with their antibiotic resistance mechanisms and to detect potential risk of these ARGs to human health upon transfer to clinical isolates. The study emphasized the potential risk to human health of such human pathogenic or commensal bacteria, being transferred via food chain or horizontally transferred to human clinical isolates. The top highly abundant rhizospheric soil non-redundant ARGs that are prevalent in bacterial human pathogens or colonizers (commensal) included mtrA, soxR, vanRO, golS, rbpA, kdpE, rpoB2, arr-1, efrA and ileS genes. Human pathogenic/colonizer bacteria existing in this soil rhizosphere included members of genera Mycobacterium, Vibrio, Klebsiella, Stenotrophomonas, Pseudomonas, Nocardia, Salmonella, Escherichia, Citrobacter, Serratia, Shigella, Cronobacter and Bifidobacterium. These bacteria belong to phyla Actinobacteria and Proteobacteria. The most highly abundant resistance mechanisms included antibiotic efflux pump, antibiotic target alteration, antibiotic target protection and antibiotic inactivation. antimicrobial resistance (AMR) families of the resistance mechanism of antibiotic efflux pump included resistance-nodulation-cell division (RND) antibiotic efflux pump (for mtrA, soxR and golS genes), major facilitator superfamily (MFS) antibiotic efflux pump (for soxR gene), the two-component regulatory kdpDE system (for kdpE gene) and ATP-binding cassette (ABC) antibiotic efflux pump (for efrA gene). AMR families of the resistance mechanism of antibiotic target alteration included glycopeptide resistance gene cluster (for vanRO gene), rifamycin-resistant beta-subunit of RNA polymerase (for rpoB2 gene) and antibiotic-resistant isoleucyl-tRNA synthetase (for ileS gene). AMR families of the resistance mechanism of antibiotic target protection included bacterial RNA polymerase-binding protein (for RbpA gene), while those of the resistance mechanism of antibiotic inactivation included rifampin ADP-ribosyltransferase (for arr-1 gene). Better agricultural and food transport practices are required especially for edible plant parts or those used in folkloric medicine. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13568-023-01597-w.