ABSTRACT
Extensive use and abuse of antibiotics in health protection and agricultural production have led to the emergence of widespread various antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) and resistant bacteria (ARB) in the environment [1,2], which is thought to pose an ever increasing threat to public health [3]. The broad spectrum tetracyclines are one of the most frequently used classes of antibiotics for protection of human and animal health [4]. Previous studies have shown that the concentrations of tetracycline in livestock wastewater [5,6] and municipal sewage [7,8] were 4.1~32.67 μg/L and 89.4~652.6 ng/L, respectively. Increasing evidence suggested that sewage
treatment plants (STPs) serve as important reservoirs for environmental tetracycline resistant bacteria (TRB) and resistance genes (tet) [9,10,11].
