Ecosystems worldwide are exposed to pollutants connected to the industrial production of pharmaceuticals. The objective of this study was to study the composition and characteristics of the soil microbial communities that had been exposed to long-term selection pressure caused by the industrial production of penicillin G. Soil samples from four sites among the penicillin G production plant were analysed using 16S rRNA profiling via Illumina MiSeq platform and were compared with the control samples from four sites outside the plant. Total metagenomic DNA from the impacted soil was also used for the preparation of E. coli T1R-based fosmid library which was consequently qualitatively tested for the presence of penicillin G acylase (PGA)–encoding genes using the method of sequence homology. Analyses of alpha diversity revealed that the long-term antibiotic presence in the soil significantly increased the microbial diversity and richness in terms of Shannon diversity index (p = 0.002) and Chao estimates (p = 0.004). Principal component analysis showed that the two types of communities (on-site and control) could be separated at the phylum, class and genus level. The on-site soil was enriched in Betaproteobacteria, Deltaproteobacteria, Gemmatimonadetes, Acidobacteria and Planctomycetia, while a significant decrease in Actinobacteria was observed. Metagenomic fosmid library revealed high hit rates in identifying PGAs (14 different genes identified) and confirmed the biotechnological potential of soils impacted by anthropogenic activity. This study offers new insights into the changes in microbial communities of soils exposed to anthropogenic activity as well as indicates that those soils may represent a hotspot for biotechnologically interesting targets.

全世界的生态系统都暴露于与制药工业生产有关的污染物。本研究的目的是研究因青霉素G工业化生产而长期处于选择压力下的土壤微生物群落的组成和特征。使用该方法分析了青霉素G生产厂中四个地点的土壤样品通过Illumina MiSeq平台进行16S rRNA分析，并与来自工厂外四个位置的对照样品进行了比较。来自受影响土壤的总宏基因组DNA也用于制备大肠杆菌基于T1R的fosmid文库，因此使用序列同源性方法定性测试了青霉素G酰基转移酶（PGA）编码基因的存在。对α多样性的分析表明，土壤中长期存在的抗生素以Shannon多样性指数（p = 0.002）和Chao估计值（p= 0.004）。主成分分析表明，可以在门，类别和属级别上将两种类型的社区（现场和对照）区分开。现场土壤富含β-变形杆菌，δ-变形杆菌，芽孢杆菌，酸性杆菌和浮游菌，而放线菌则明显减少。元基因组化石文库在鉴定PGA（鉴定出14个不同的基因）时显示出很高的命中率，并证实了受人为活动影响的土壤的生物技术潜力。这项研究为暴露于人为活动的土壤微生物群落的变化提供了新的见解，并指出这些土壤可能代表了生物技术关注目标的热点。