Building and Breaking the Cell Wall in Four Acts: A Kinesthetic and Tactile Role-Playing Exercise for Teaching Beta-Lactam Antibiotic Mechanism of Action and Resistance

Educational Activities for Students and Citizens Supporting the One-Health Approach on Antimicrobial Resistance

Antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest threats to global health, food security and development. Urgent action is needed at all levels of society to reduce the impact and spread of antibiotic resistance. For a more sustaining approach, education in children, college students, citizens and caregivers are essential. The One-Heath approach is a collaborative, multisectoral and transdisciplinary strategy in which, no single organizations or sector can address the issue of antimicrobial resistance at the human-environment interface alone. Within this strategy, education plays a central role. In this scoping review, we highlighted a range of learning activities on antibiotic resistance as part of the One-Health approach. In particular, those applications that can be introduced to a wide audience to help arrest the current crisis for the next generation. The review identifies a high number of teaching opportunities: board and role-play games, round tables, musicals, e-learning and environmental experiments to couple with more curricula and formal education to inform a diverse group of audiences.

Effective removal of pharmaceutical impurities and nutrients using biocatalyst from the municipal wastewater with moving bed packed reactor

The presence of antibiotics in the wastewater is one of the important issues related to environmental management. In this study, antibiotics-degrading bacteria were screened from the enriched sewage sludge sample. Among the isolated bacterial strains, Bacillus subtilis AQ03 showed maximum antibiotic tolerance (>2000 ppm). The characterized strain B. subtilis AQ03 degraded sulfamethaoxazole and sulfamethoxine and the optimum nutrient and physical-factors were analyzed. B. subtilis AQ03 degraded 99.8 ± 1.3 % sulfamethaoxazole, and 93.3 ± 6.2 % sulfamethoxine. Sodium nitrate and ammonium chloride were improved antibiotics degradation (<90 %). The optimized conditions were maintained in a moving bed bioreactor for the removal of antibiotics and nutrients from the wastewater. The selected strain considerably produced proteases (109.4 U/mL), amylases (55.1 U/mL), cellulase (9.6 U/mL) and laccases (15.2). In moving bed reactor, sulfamethaoxazole degradation was maximum after 8 days (100 ± 1.5 %) and sulfamethoxazole (100 ± 0) was removed completely from wastewater after 10 days. In moving bed reactor, biological oxygen demand (92.1 ± 2.8 %), chemical oxygen demand (79.6 ± 1.2 %), nitrate (89.4 ± 3.9 %) and phosphate (91.8 ± 1.2) were removed from the wastewater along with antibiotics after 10 days of treatment. The findings indicate that the indigenous bacterial communities and the ability to survive in the presence of high antibiotic concentrations and xenobiotics. Moving bed bioreactor is useful for the removal of nutrients and antibiotics from wastewater.

Antibiotics bioremediation: Perspectives on its ecotoxicity and resistance

Antibiotic is one of the most significant discoveries and have brought a revolution in the field of medicine for human therapy. In addition to the medical uses, antibiotics have broad applications in agriculture and animal husbandry. In developing nations, antibiotics use have helped to increase the life expectancy by lowering the deaths due to bacterial infections, but the risks associated with antibiotics pollution is largely affecting people. Since antibiotics are released partially degraded and undegraded into environment creating antibiotic pollution, and its bioremediation is a challenging task. In the present review, we have discussed the primary antibiotic sources like hospitals, dairy, and agriculture causing antibiotic pollution and their innovative detection methods. The strong commitment towards the resistance prevention and participation, nations through strict policies and their implementations now come to fight against the antibiotic resistance under WHO. The review also deciphers the bacterial evolution based strategies to overcome the effects of antibiotics, so the antibiotic degradation and elimination from the environment and its health benefits. The present review focuses on the environmental sources of antibiotics, it's possible degradation mechanisms, health effects, and bacterial antibiotics resistance mechanisms.