Wastewater treatment plants are important reservoirs and sources for the dissemination of antibiotic resistance into the environment. Here, two different groups of carbapenem resistant bacteria—the potentially environmental and the potentially pathogenic—were isolated from both the wastewater influent and discharged effluent of a full-scale wastewater treatment plant and characterized by whole genome sequencing and antibiotic susceptibility testing. Among the potentially environmental isolates, there was no detection of any acquired antibiotic resistance genes, which supports the idea that their resistance mechanisms are mainly intrinsic. On the contrary, the potentially pathogenic isolates presented a broad diversity of acquired antibiotic resistance genes towards different antibiotic classes, especially β-lactams, aminoglycosides, and fluoroquinolones. All these bacteria showed multiple β-lactamase-encoding genes, some with carbapenemase activity, such as the bla_KPC-type genes found in the Enterobacteriaceae isolates. The antibiotic susceptibility testing assays performed on these isolates also revealed that all had a multi-resistance phenotype, which indicates that the acquired resistance is their major antibiotic resistance mechanism. In conclusion, the two bacterial groups have distinct resistance mechanisms, which suggest that the antibiotic resistance in the environment can be a more complex problematic than that generally assumed.

Wastewater reuse for agricultural irrigation still raises important public health issues regarding its safety, due to the increasing presence of emerging contaminants, such as antibiotic resistant bacteria and genes, in the treated effluents. In this paper, the potential for a commercial Desal 5 DK nanofiltration membrane to be used as a tertiary treatment in the wastewater treatment plants for a more effective elimination of these pollutants from the produced effluents was assessed on laboratory scale, using a stainless steel cross-flow cell. The obtained results showed high concentrations of total bacteria and target carbapenem and (fluoro)quinolone resistance genes (bla_KPC, bla_OXA-48, bla_NDM, bla_IMP, bla_VIM, qnrA, qnrB and qnrS) not only in the discharged, but also in the reused, effluent samples, which suggests that their use may not be entirely safe. Nevertheless, the applied nanofiltration treatment achieved removal rates superior to 98% for the total bacteria and 99.99% for all the target resistance genes present in both DNA and extracellular DNA fractions, with no significant differences for these microbiological parameters between the nanofiltered and the control tap water samples. Although additional studies are still needed to fully optimize the entire process, the use of nanofiltration membranes seems to be a promising solution to substantially increase the quality of the treated wastewater effluents.

The fishery industry generates large amounts of waste (20–75% (w/w) of the total caught fish weight). The recovery of bioactive compounds from residues and their incorporation in cosmetics represents a promising market opportunity and may contribute to a sustainable valorisation of the sector. In this work, protein-rich extracts obtained by high-pressure technologies (supercritical CO₂ and subcritical water) from sardine (Sardina pilchardus) waste and codfish (Gadus morhua) frames were characterized regarding their cosmeceutical potential. Antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and antibacterial activities were evaluated through chemical (ORAC assay), enzymatic (inhibition of elastase and tyrosinase), antimicrobial susceptibility (Klebsiella pneumoniae, Staphylococcus aureus and Cutibacterium acnes) and cell-based (in keratinocytes-HaCaT) assays. Sardine extracts presented the highest antibacterial activity, and the extract obtained using higher extraction temperatures (250 °C) and without the defatting step demonstrated the lowest minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) values (1.17; 4.6; 0.59 mg/mL for K. pneumoniae, S. aureus and C. acnes, respectively). Codfish samples extracted at lower temperatures (90 °C) were the most effective anti-inflammatory agents (a concentration of 0.75 mg/mL reduced IL-8 and IL-6 levels by 58% and 47%, respectively, relative to the positive control). Threonine, valine, leucine, arginine and total protein content in the extracts were highlighted to present a high correlation with the reported bioactivities (R² ≥ 0.7). These results support the potential application of extracts obtained from fishery industry wastes in cosmeceutical products with bioactive activities.

Glandora prostrata (Loisel.) D.C.Thomas (Thomas et al., Citation2008 ), besides being a common plant of western and south-western Europe and north-western Africa, is a species with a wealth of reported uses in traditional and folk medicine. The chloroplast genome of Glandora prostrata subsp. lusitanica (Samp.) D.C.Thomas (Thomas et al., Citation2008 ) isolate BPTPS049 described in this study is the first publicly available complete plastome belonging to the Glandora genus. The chloroplast genome (GenBank accession number: ON641304) is 150,041 bp in length with 37.5% GC content, displaying a quadripartite structure that contains a pair of inverted repeat regions (25,833 bp each), separated by a large (81,222 bp) and small (17,153 bp) single-copy regions. It has 131 annotated genes including 86 protein-coding genes, 37 tRNA genes, and eight rRNA genes. The phylogenetic analysis performed confirms that G. prostrata subsp. lusitanica is placed under the Boraginaceae family, which belongs to the Boraginales order. This study will contribute to conservation, phylogenetic, and evolutionary studies that comprise this traditional species relevant to the landscape of aromatic, medicinal, and condiment plants from Portugal.