Molecular identification of antibiotic resistance genes of bacteria isolates from ready to eat food and drinking water sold in Imo State University

Food and water are fundamental need of human as its quality is of great concern to the generality of consumers, despite quality control measures during their production, unacceptable microbiological load often makes them unsafe. In this study, we analyzed various ready to eat food and water for presence of coliform bacteria, fungi count, antibiotic resistance gene and plasmid DNA, Samples were found to be positive for various antibiotic resistance genes namely, Sul1, Sul2, Tet A and TetB, interestingly, considerable total coliform bacteria were found from isolates and this result was further confirmed using illumina sequencing of the 16SrRNA gene. All Samples were negative for plasmid DNA, These finding deserve attention as the presence of coliform bacterial and antibiotic resistance genes potentiate health risk to members of university community and as such calls for strigent supervision and saftety and implementation of food safety regulations.