Bacteria are better predictive biomarkers of environmental estrogen transmission than fungi

The heavy reliance on estrogens in the food industry worldwide greatly contributes to the environmental release of these compounds, begetting serious public concern of their fate. Various microorganisms capable of estrogen degradation, and their catabolic pathways, have been isolated, suggesting that they can eliminate estrogens in both engineered and natural environments. Nonetheless, it remains little understood as to how potential estrogen-degrading microorganisms are distributed within those habitats. An estrogen transmission chain from swine manure to compost, compost-amended soil, and neighboring agricultural soil was investigated in five suburban areas of Beijing, China. The concentrations of major estrogen classes decreased by > 90% from manure to soils, which did not co-vary with environmental antibiotics and heavy metal concentrations. Many bacterial taxa, such as Lactobacillus and Bacteroides, could serve as potential biomarkers of estrogen concentrations, while fungi were only occasionally accurate. To explain this phenomenon, stochasticity was found to be dominant in shaping the fungal communities across all samples, while deterministic selection, arising from biotic interactions, was important for bacterial communities. Metabolic genes involved in oxidizing phenol and catalyzing oxidative ring cleavage of catechol were detected, co-varying with estrogen concentrations. These findings are important as identifying microbial biomarkers of estrogen dynamics, spanning the levels of both taxonomy and functional genes, provides valuable information for assessing estrogen bioavailability and biomarking of estrogen fate in the environment.