Advances in Antibiotic Biodegradation: Emerging Strategies and Challenges in Mitigating Environmental Contamination and Resistance

Purpose of Review

The various disease outbreaks have increased the consumption of antibiotics. Unfortunately, this condition can further increase the accumulation of antibiotics that can pollute the environment and even human health. Biodegradation is one method to reduce or even eliminate the accumulation of antibiotics. This review aims to discuss the sources of antibiotics in the environment, mechanisms of antibiotic biodegradation, factors affecting the biodegradation process, ecological risks, regulatory implications, current strategies that have been implemented, and innovative approaches to reduce antibiotic resistance and environmental contamination.

Recent Findings

Recent studies have highlighted antibiotic resistance in aquatic and soil environments. This increases the threat of antibiotic-resistant bacterial populations. Biodegradation techniques such as biological wastewater treatment, wetlands, microbial degradation, and algal degradation have been able to show satisfactory performance. In particular, microbial consortia and genetic modification of bacteria, fungi, and microalgae can also provide synergistic metabolic pathways that enhance the efficiency of antibiotic degradation. In addition, biogenic nanoparticles and enzyme-assisted degradation methods, such as laccases, can be advanced innovative approaches for antibiotic biodegradation. 

Summary

Antibiotic biodegradation has been a pivotal research focus due to increasing environmental pollution and the risk of antibiotic resistance. This topic is promising in decomposing antibiotics into compounds that are more tolerant of the environment. Although there has been progress in antibiotic biodegradation research, further studies should be conducted to overcome challenges such as the complexity of the compounds, antibiotic stability, antibiotic and gene resistance phenomena, and non-optimal environmental factors.