Fig. 1: Transformation of free plasmid harbouring ARGs induced by non-antibiotic pharmaceuticals.

a Schematic of the experimental design. b Fold changes of transformation frequency under the exposure of various concentrations of non-antibiotic pharmaceuticals, relative to pharmaceutical-free solvents. c Electrophoresis of plasmid pWH1266 (lane 1 is the original plasmid, lanes 2–3 are plasmids extracted from transformants of control with water and ethanol as the solvent, and lanes 4–9 are plasmids extracted from transformants of the pharmaceutical-dosed groups). d Electrophoresis of plasmid PCR products for tetA gene (lane 1 is the original plasmid, lanes 2–3 are plasmids extracted from transformants of control with water and ethanol as solvent, and lanes 4–9 are plasmids extracted from transformants of the pharmaceutical-dosed groups). e Electrophoresis of PCR products generated for the bla gene from the extracted plasmids (lane 1 is from the original plasmid, lanes 2–3 are from plasmids extracted from transformants of controls with water and ethanol as solvent, and lanes 4–9 are from plasmids extracted from transformants of the pharmaceutical-exposed groups). Significant differences between non-antibiotic-dosed samples and the control were analysed by independent-sample t-test and corrected by Bonferroni correction method, *P^* < 0.05, **P* < 0.01, and ***P* < 0.001.