Micaela Oliveira, a PhD student working at Food Safety & Microbiology Lab (Food & Health Division, iBET) received the best poster award within the Environmental Microbiology field, at the Microbiotec’19 congress held in Coimbra, Portugal.
The awarded poster, entitled “The fate of carbapenem and quinolone resistant bacteria and genes in two Portuguese full-scale wastewater treatment plants“, describes part of Micaela’s PhD work on the importance of the environmental sector in the dissemination of antibiotic resistance by wastewater effluents.
This research gives insights about the presence and dissemination of the most relevant resistance genes towards one of the most important groups of last-line antibiotics in the wastewater environments.
In this work, the researchers demonstrated that wastewater treatment plants are a major vehicle for the dissemination of antibiotic resistance. Thus, for wastewater reuse to become a safe and reliable practice, targeted treatments towards antibiotic resistant bacteria and genes must be developed and implemented in the wastewater treatment plants.
The Microbiotec’19 congress was held in Coimbra, on December 5-7. This biennale conference, although directed at the Portuguese scientists, aims to provide an international scientific forum by which researchers from all over the world share their knowledge, exchange ideas, and discuss scientific policy and regulatory issues associated with the microbiology and the biotechnology in the future.