Microbial structures and community functions of anaerobic sludge in six full-scale wastewater treatment plants as revealed by 454 high-throughput pyrosequencing

• Published in: Bioresource technology 2015-06, Vol.186, p.163-172
• Main Authors: Shu, Duntao, He, Yanling, Yue, Hong, Wang, Qingyi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Anaerobic sludge; Anaerobiosis - physiology; Bacteria - genetics; Bacteria - metabolism; Bioreactors - microbiology; Denitrification - genetics; Microbial community structures; Nitrogen - metabolism; Pyrosequencing; Quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR); Redundancy analysis; RNA, Ribosomal, 16S - genetics; Sewage - microbiology; Waste Disposal, Fluid - methods; Waste Water - microbiology
• ISSN: 0960-8524; 1873-2976
• DOI: 10.1016/j.biortech.2015.03.072

•Microbial communities were investigated by 454 pyrosequencing and qPCR.•AOA and anammox bacteria may be heterotrophic or mixotrophic.•AOA and AOB showed partially beneficial cooperation with anammox genes.•Coexistence of anammox, denitrification and DNRA was confirmed in WWTPs.•Operational parameters have highly effects on the microbial communities. The microbial communities and abundance in anaerobic sludge from 4 industrial and 2 municipal wastewater treatment plants were investigated using 454 pyrosequencing technology in this study. A total of 5482–8692 high-quality reads of 16S rRNA V3-V5 regions were obtained. Taxonomic analysis using QIIME and RDP classifier found that Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Chloroflexi and Firmicutes were the most abundant phyla in these samples. Furthermore, real-time PCR was used to validate the absolute abundance of these 16S rRNAs and some functional genes, including total bacteria, anammox bacteria, NOB (Nitrobacter, Nitrospira), AOA amoA, AOB amoA, nosZ, nirS, nirK, narG, napA, nrfA, mcrA and dsrA. Multivariate linear regression analysis indicated that AOA might be mixotrophic. Finally, redundancy analysis was used to reveal the relationships between operation parameters and microbial communities. Results showed that the coexistence of anammox, denitrification and DNRA could be useful for the simultaneous removal of nitrogen and organic matter.