Blocking antibiotic resistance contamination dissemination to neutralized the impacts of bacterial oxidative stress via efficient photocatalysis

Transmission of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in wastewater, which seriously threaten the ecological safety and human health, has attracted increasing attention recently throughout the world. However, the correlations between bacterial interaction and environmental stress in photo-inactivation are rarely studied. In this study, the efficient photo-treatment of ZIF@CF QDs-Fe for ARGs removal were explored, attributed to the superiority electric transfer rate and stable redox cycles of ZIF@CF QDs-Fe heterojunction. The experimental results revealed that the leaked e-ARGs and mobile genetic elements (MGEs) were immediately captured and attacked by the extracellular ROS (·OH, ·O₂^–), which could block the antibiotic-resistance dissemination. Meanwhile, ZIF@CF QDs-Fe photo-treatment further neutralized the negative effect of ROS induced oxidative stress, benefiting for the controlling of ARGs conjugative transfer. Combined with bacterial interactions, both the bacterial density and the abundance of dominant ARGs host was synergically reduced when the photo-treatment progressed, thus alleviating the ARGs natural dissemination risk. Meanwhile, the downregulation of transporter proteins and antibiotic target proteins elucidated that the ARGs transcription and bacterial reproduction were significantly suppressed under photo-inactivation. Interestingly, partial of the antibiotic bacterial sensitivity would be recovered through the regulations of bacterial functional expressions and further alleviated the potential ecological risk. Overall, these findings shed light on the inactivation mechanism of the nanomaterial mediated photo-treatment in blocking the resistance transfer pathways, giving valuable guidance for mitigating the antibiotic resistance dissemination in wastewater treatments.