The UCP team integrates the Bacterial Ecology lab of the Centre of Biotechnology and Fine Chemistry, a Research Centre created in 1992 within the Faculty of Biotechnology of the Catholic University of Portugal (ESB - UCP). The lab is dedicated to the study of bacteria and bacterial communities that thrive in the interface humans-environment, with interests in both the environmental impacts caused by humans and the consequent risks for human health and wellbeing.
The team works for more than 15 years in the study of the impacts of wastewater treatment plants in the acquisition, enrichment/elimination, and dissemination of antibiotic resistance. The urban wastewater treatment plants are important receptors and source of antibiotic residues, and other antimicrobials, together with a high diversity of bacteria (from the environmental and human origin), which may create the ideal conditions for the survival and proliferation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. This research team has explored how the wastewater treatment affects not only the bacterial communities of the raw wastewater but also the presence of selective pressures, by antibiotic residues or other antimicrobials, and some genetic elements as the antibiotic resistance genes and mobile genetic elements frequently associated with the dissemination of those genes. The possible contribution of the treated wastewater to antibiotic resistance dissemination to the environment, trough discharge in a natural water body or reuse for irrigation, is also one of the major focuses of this team research.