3.2 The sewage community is rich in potent plasmid donors
In order to assess the potential of HI1A plasmid dissemination within
sewage communities, we sorted and enriched R27 and Pb10 transconjugants
from conjugation assays from Ellinge sewage community. Briefly, the
enriched transconjugant sewage communities were grown in broth with
plasmid selective antibiotics, and GFP expression was verified, to
ensure plasmid maintenance and trackability. We subsequently quantified
the plasmid transfer to a E. coli MG1655 recipient not encoding
LacIq. This was furthermore compared to direct plasmid
transfer from the E. coli donor to the E. coli recipient
(figure 2b). The enriched transconjugant sewage community members
harboring either R27 or pB10 and the E. coli donor were found to
transfer their plasmids equally efficiently to the E. colirecipient (p > 0.05) (figure 2b). However, both the
conjugation assays from E. coli to E. coli and enriched
transconjugant sewage community to E. coli , revealed that R27 was
transferred significantly less than pB10 (p<0.05) (figure 2b).