Impacts of Cu and Zn on the performance, microbial community dynamics and resistance genes variations during mesophilic and thermophilic anaerobic digestion of swine manure

In this work, fate of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs), heavy metal resistance genes (MRGs) and intI1 were investigated during mesophilic (mAD) and thermophilic anaerobic digestion (tAD) of swine manure with presence of Cu and Zn. Results showed that metal reduced the lag phase time. Cu showed stronger inhibition than Zn on archaea community and metals inhibited the growth of acetoclastic methanogens during mAD. Although total concentration of metals increased after AD, they were transformed into stable state. The abundance of qnrS, sul1, sul2 and drfA7 increased 1.2–5.7 times after mAD, while reduced after tAD, showed that tAD was effective in ARGs removal. Structural equation model analysis suggested that intI1 had the most standardized direct effects on ARGs variation in mAD (R = 0.85, p < 0.01), while the co-occurrence of MRGs with ARGs showed significantly positive influences on ARGs variation in tAD (R = 0.82, p < 0.01).