INteractions of Veterinary antibiotics (VA) with soil microorganisms: exploiting microbial degradation to avert Environmental contamination and ResisTance dispersal
HFRI project #01183
Veterinary antibiotics (VA) are used prophylactically (e.g. mainly in swine farming) or therapeutically (cattle, swine and other animals) against infections. The amounts of VA used annually are three to four times higher than those used on humans, with pig farming being dominant. The majority of VA are not metabolized in animals in vivo with 40-90% frequently being excreted as parent compounds through urine and feces. Such release may promote the development of antibiotic microbial resistance in environments impacted by animal excretes.
INVERT aims at:
- shedding light in the complex interactions of VA with soil microorganisms
- Finding routes for INVERTing the outcome of the environmental pressure imposed by VA on the soil microbial community from negative (selection for resistance) to beneficial (selection for energy-gain biodegradation of VA) and exploit growth-linked biodegradation to reduce environmental exposure to VA.
More specifically, we seek to:
1) Gain insights:
- about the impact of VA on the function, abundance and diversity of the microbial community
- about the dispersal of microbial resistance to the tested antibiotics
- about putative beneficial VA biodegradation mechanisms
2) Isolate and characterize VA mineralizing or antibio-trophic microorganisms and associated mechanisms.
3) Evaluate associated bioaugmentation approaches.
Sotirios Vasileiadis (project role: Primary Ivestigator) has recently become an Assistant Professor (in May 2021) at the group of Plant and Environmental Biotechnology (PEB), of the department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology (DBB), of the University of Thessaly (UTh), with expertise in Microbial Ecology, Meta-omics and associated bioinformatics
Chiara Perruchon (project role: Post doctoral Fellow) is a post Doctoral Fellow at PEB of DBB (UTh) with expertise in Microbial Ecology, Traditional Microbiology and Synthetic Biology
Panagiotis Karas (project role: Post doctoral Fellow) is a post Doctoral Fellow at the group of Plant and Environmental Biotechnology (PEB), of the department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology (DBB), of the University of Thessaly (UTh), with expertise in Analytical Environmental Chemistry, Molecular Microbial Ecology and associated bio-informatics/statistics.
Dimitrios G. Karpouzas (project role: Advisory Board member and PI in reserve) is one of the leaders of PEB and Director of DBB (UTh), and Soil Microbial Ecology and pesticides environmental fate and biodegradation expert
Fabrice Martin-Laurent (project role: Advisory Board member) is the adjunct director of the Agroecology institute (INRAE Dijon), and Soil Microbial Ecology and pesticides microbial biodegradation expert; he has strong experience with VA biodegraders in soil (ANTIBIOTOX)
Urania Menkissoglu-Spiroudi (project role: advisory Board member) is the director of the pesticides laboratory of the Agricultural Sciences Faculty of the Aristotle University of Thassaloniki (AUTh) with extensive expertise in Analytical Agricultural Chemistry
Smaragda Sotiraki (project role: Advisory Board member) is the head of the Parasitology lab of the Veterinary Research Institute of Hellenic Agricultural Organization-DIMITRA, with expertise in veterinary antiparasitic drugs and resistance
Antonios Zdragas (project role: Advisory Board member) is the head of the Microbiology lab and the Director of the Veterinary Research Institute of Hellenic Agricultural Organization-DIMITRA, and an expert in VA and resistance
Constantinos Ehaliotis is Professor at the Agricultural University of Athens (AUA) and Soil Microbial Ecology and soil fertility expert
We are very happy to recruit Eleni Katsivelou, a PhD candidate that suceeded in the competition for a project position, and she will participate in most experimental work and data analysis of INVERT. She started her work in this project on the 22nd of March 2021
- 8/06/2021 Our first journal article with our colleagues from the Nireas International Water Research Center (Nicosia, Cyprus) and the University of Cyprus (Nicosia, Cyprus), a work linked to the project and the shotgun sequencing analysis methods setup, is published! Check it out:
Karaolia Popi*, Vasileiadis Sotirios*, Michael G. Stella,c, Karpouzas G. Dimitrios**, Fatta-Kassinos Despo** (2021) Shotgun metagenomics assessment of the resistome, mobilome, pathogen dynamics and their ecological control modes in full-scale urban wastewater treatment plants. Journal of Hazardous Materials, DOI https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2021.126387
* equal author contribution, ** correspondence
- 16-18/12/2021 Our first project dataset published at the Mikrobiokosmos society 9th conference by Eleni Katsivelou! Check it out:
Katsivelou E, Perruchon C, Karas PA, Sarantidou A, Vassilakis S, Lithourgidis A, Kotsopoulos T, Sotiraki S, Vasileiadis S, Karpouzas DG (corresponding author), Following the route of veterinary antibiotics tiamulin and tilmicosin from livestock farms to agricultural soils. 9th conference of Microbiokosmos 16-18 dec (2021)
- 30/6/2022-2/7/2022 initial INVERT results presented in FEMS 2022 by Eleni Katsivelou! Check it out (book of abstracts):
Katsivelou E, Perruchon C, Karas PA, Sarantidou A, Vassilakis S, Lithourgidis A, Kotsopoulos T, Sotiraki S, Vasileiadis S, Karpouzas DG (corresponding author), Following the route of veterinary antibiotics tiamulin and tilmicosin from livestock farms to agricultural soils. FEMS 2022, Belgrade, Serbia
- 30/6/2022-2/7/2022 WP3 Chemical, biochemical, qPCR, sequencing data presented by Sotirios and Eleni at FEMS 2022 (book of abstracts)!
Katsivelou E., Perruchon C., Karas P.A., Sarantidou A., Sotiraki S., Vasileiadis S., Karpouzas D.G., Environmental fate of three antibiotics, sulfomethoxazole, tiamulin and tilmicosin, and their impact on the microbial community. FEMS 2022, Belgrade, Serbia
- 1/10/2022 Eleni and Sotirios presented the project to the young friends of research through a poster and tried to inspire at the European Researcher's night event!
- 15/11/2022 Panagiotis and Sotirios presented the project at the Ecotoxicomic 2022 conference at Montpellier through a poster and an oral presentation respectively to globally reputed researchers of the field! Also check out the book of abstracts.
- 01/12/2022 Check out the project podcast created and narrated by Eleni Katsivelou.
- 26/04/2023 INVERT reaches the broad readership of Dnews with a striking article!!!
- 21/06/2023 STOTEN publication from Eleni Katsivelou, our PhD candidate of INVERT, on the environmental fate and ecotoxicology of veterinary antibiotics, and also in antibiotic resistance in agricultural environments.
Katsivelou, E, Perruchon, C, Karas, P A, Sarantidou, A, Pappa, E, Katsoula, A, Ligda, P, Sotiraki, S, Martin-Laurent, F, Vasileiadis, S, Karpouzas, D G (2023). Accelerated dissipation, soil microbial toxicity and dispersal of antimicrobial resistance in soils repeatedly exposed to tiamulin, tilmicosin and sulfamethoxazole. Sci Total Environ 893, 164817, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.164817
Many congratulations Eleni and we are looking forward to the upcoming project publications!!!
- 05/10/2023 School visit by the 1st Experimental Highschool of Larissa.
The second grade of the Experimental Highscool of Larissa, within the context of setting the foreground for the ERASMUS programme with France and Germany, has visited the the Department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology. There, they had the chance to hear about microbial resistance to antibiotics in environmental settings by Dr Sotirios Vasiliadis and interact with him about the topic. The students seemed to be well informed about the topic and very interested about its reprecutions (well done to them and their tutors!!! amazing class!!!). Also tutors from Germany and France, responsible for setting up the ERASMUS visits from/to highschools in their countries, appreciated the endeavouring spirit demonstrated by the students.
- 30/11-02/12 of 2023 Oral presntations of the INVERT results of WPs 3 and 4 by Eleni Katsivelou and Chiara Perruchon. Great presentations!!! Well done to both!!!
Eleni presented her excellent work on the ecotoxicilogical, the AMR, and the enhanced biodegradation aspects of the antibiotic pressure receiving microbial communities.
Dr Perruchon gave an excellent talk about the isolation, comparative-genomics, transcriptomics, and metabolomics of a strain belongin to a novel Sphingomonas species she isolated from the WP3 soil, Ca. Sphingomonas perruchonii DBB INV C78.
Keep in touch through our site for Dissemination & Outreach updates!
- Kick-off meeting. 29/01/2021 Friday 14:00-18:00 Greek local time (13:00-17:00 CET)
During our kick-off meeting, introductions were made among all mebers, the current status of VA sales and use in Greece was discusssed, and, most importantly, the pieces of important elements of the experiemntal design started falling in place. All invited members and colleagues with essential contributions were present (thank you all!!!). Catalytic tests for adding the final touches to the experimental design were desided, releasing the ground for getting started with essential tasks.
- Seminar on microbiome analysis using phylogenetic marker genes by Sotirios. 25/10/2021 - 2/11/2021
Within the INVERT project context, Sotirios gave a seminar on the analysis of microbiomes using phylogenetic marker genes and next generation sequences technologies (NGS). The seminar was performed in a hybrid mode (with both physical and virtual presence), in compliance with the COVID-19 protocols/restrictions. The seminar included: one day of background buildup through a "marathon" lecture on several importnat topics; one day of theory and hands on experience on R and mothur (crash course); one day of going through worked examples; two days of questions and answers on any related topic and the progress of the attendees on the worked examples. The schedule flyer can be found here while pictures can be found below.
In the last sminar day, Olga Tsiouri, a young researcher at our department provided an introductory lecturer on the version control GitHub tool.
I would proudly like to thank the the international audience of more than 50 people that actively participated physically or virtually (we appeared live in the computer screens of 4 countries: Greece, Australia, Cyprus and the UK). Whereas, the nationalities of the paricipants included Greek, Cypriot, Armenian, Pakistani, Brazilian, Malaisian, Chinese, and Australian!
Finally, I would like to thank Christina Papazlatani for her valuable support!
This seminar will further be expanded in the HosMic MSc programme which will take place for the first time in spring 2022.
- Intermediate project meeting. 18/05/2022 Wednesday 09:30-12:00 Greek local time (08:30-11:00 CET)
Its been a pleasure discussing our so far results... numerous data generated in the first half of the project. Looking forward to the exciting upcoming period data analysis.
Best regards to all participants (young and old... we also have the debute of a really young researcher as you may realize)!
- Seminar on microbiome analysis using phylogenetic marker genes by Sotirios. 20/04/2023 - 24/04/2023
Post COVID19-danger-zone opportunity for training and technology transfer. A new seminar fostered by the INTOMED/INVERT/ARISTO coallision. Sotirios gave a seminar on the analysis of microbiomes using phylogenetic marker genes and next generation sequences technologies (NGS) within the context of other INTOMED-fostered training activities...
- 14/12/2023 HABEMUM DR KATSIVELOU!!!
Many congratulations Eleni!!!
We'll keep you posted for upcoming events!!!