Antibiotic-resistant genes: People are afraid living with smog

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Pollution is the key headache of the densely populated city of Beijing, and now a new problem has surfaced here. The polluted smog of Beijing is now contaminated with a certain type of bacteria that ultimately explores drug or antibiotic-resistance genes.

According to the journal Microbiome, "Antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) are widespread but cause problems only when present in pathogens."

The Journal also explains when these ARGs can cause problems.

The researchers have explored that "Environments where selection and transmission of antibiotic resistance frequently take place are likely to be characterized by high abundance and diversity of horizontally transferable ARGs."

Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported that the people of the city are worried about these antibiotic-resistance genes.

Though, later the story was deleted from most of the news portal as there could be a panic among the large scale of people in Beijing. Even it is said that the Health Department of the city reported that there is nothing so serious.

Sources of The New York Times reveal the best example of this problem. The sources mentioned that Zhang Ziyi, a famous actress, was compelled to fly away from Beijing with "her 11-month-old daughter".

The study, published in the Microbiome Journal also said, "Human and animal microbial communities were characterized by limited taxonomic diversity and low abundance and diversity of biocide/metal resistance genes and MGEs but a relatively high abundance of ARGs."

The researchers define that different kinds of environment indicates the difference in resistance profiles and also in the compositions of the bacterial community.

The even further study reported a clear indication of problems in the smog of Beijing.

The report says, "The environments with the largest relative abundance and diversity of ARGs, including genes encoding resistance to last resort antibiotics, were those subjected to industrial antibiotic pollution and a limited set of deeply sequenced air samples from a Beijing smog event."

When parents are searching for a pollution free weather to gift their successors, then this report is surely a matter of great concern. 

Currently, this crucial fact related to drug or antibiotic- resistance genes becomes a major issue that should be addressed quickly and efficiently to gift a better environment to our descendants.