A TbPO-based capturer for environmental extracellular antibiotic genes by interrogating lanthanide phosphates nanoneedles.

Accurate determination of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in environmental DNA molecules (eDNA) is challenging owing to its low abundance in the aquatic environment. Here we report a facile and cost-efficient approach to extract trace amount of eDNAs in the aquatic environment using LnPO nanomaterials. Among the nanomaterials, less crystalline TbPO nanoneedles was identified as the most prominent candidate for long stranded DNA and short stranded DNA with adsorption efficiency above 97%. The adsorbed DNA was washed off from TbPO nanoneedles by optimized eluant (85% PBS, 15% EtOH, 4 g/L glycine, pH 10.0) with an optimal DNA recovery of 78.83%. Our approach showed a comparable or better eDNA extraction efficiency than a commercial extraction method for different environmental samples, but 89% less cost. The high purity of the extracted eDNA was demonstrated by a high A ratio. Using qPCR experiment, the occurrence of six common ARGs in the eDNA were detected with abundance ranging from 4.06 × 10 to 3.51 × 10 copies/L in river samples. This specific DNA capturer is valuable for the evaluation of spatial and temporal dynamic of ARGs pollution to provide insight into the potential risk with regard to the human health.