Large-scale biogeographical patterns of antibiotic resistome in the forest soils across China

Highlights: • National scale investigation on ARGs in pristine forest soils. • Occurrence of 30 ARGs resisting modern antibiotics in pristine forest soils. • Geographic patterns of ARGs and ARG-hosts followed a distance-decay relationship. • Soil physicochemical variables are key driving forces for ARGs distribution. Soil is a reservoir of environmental resistomes. Information about their distribution, profiles, and driving forces in undisturbed environments is essential for understanding and managing modern antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in human disturbed environments. However, knowledge about the resistomes in pristine soils is limited, particularly at national scale. Here, we conducted a national-scale investigation of soil resistomes in pristine forests across China. Although the antibiotics content was low and ranged from below limit of detection (LOD) to 0.290 μg/kg, numerous detected ARGs conferring resistance to major classes of modern antibiotics were identified and indicated forest soils as a potential source of resistance traits. ARGs ranged from 6.20 × 10⁻⁷ to 2.52 × 10⁻³ copies/16S-rRNA and were predominated by those resisting aminoglycoside and encoding deactivation mechanisms. Low abundance of mobile genetic elements (MGEs) and its scarcely positive connections with ARGs suggest the low potential of horizontal gene transfer. The geographic patterns of ARGs and ARG-hosts in pristine forest soils were mainly driven by soil physiochemical variables and followed a distance–decay relationship. This work focusing on pristine soils can provide valuably new information for our understanding of the ARGs in human disturbed environments.