Microbial Community Functional Structures in Wastewater Treatment Plants as Characterized by GeoChip
- Tsinghua Univ., Beijing (China). School of the Environment. Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control State Key Joint Lab.; Beijing Univ. of Chemical Technology (China). Dept. of Environmental Science and Engineering
- Tsinghua Univ., Beijing (China). School of the Environment. Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control State Key Joint Lab.
- Tsinghua Univ., Beijing (China). School of the Environment. Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control State Key Joint Lab.; Univ. of Oklahoma, Norman, OK (United States). Dept. of Microbiology and Plant Biology. Inst. for Environmental Genomics; Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). Earth Sciences Division
Background: Biological WWTPs must be functionally stable to continuously and steadily remove contaminants which rely upon the activity of complex microbial communities. However, knowledge is still lacking in regard to microbial community functional structures and their linkages to environmental variables. Aims: To investigate microbial community functional structures of activated sludge in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and to understand the effects of environmental factors on their structure. Methods: 12 activated sludge samples were collected from four WWTPs in Beijing. A comprehensive functional gene array named GeoChip 4.2 was used to determine the microbial functional genes involved in a variety of biogeochemical processes such as carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous and sulfur cycles, metal resistance, antibiotic resistance and organic contaminant degradation. Results: High similarities of the microbial community functional structures were found among activated sludge samples from the four WWTPs, as shown by both diversity indices and the overlapped genes. For individual gene category, such as egl, amyA, lip, nirS, nirK, nosZ, ureC, ppx, ppk, aprA, dsrA, sox and benAB, there were a number of microorganisms shared by all 12 samples. Canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) showed that the microbial functional patterns were highly correlated with water temperature, dissolved oxygen (DO), ammonia concentrations and loading rate of chemical oxygen demand (COD). Based on the variance partitioning analyses (VPA), a total of 53% of microbial community variation from GeoChip data can be explained by wastewater characteristics (25%) and operational parameters (23%), respectively. Conclusions: This study provided an overall picture of microbial community functional structures of activated sludge in WWTPs and discerned the linkages between microbial communities and environmental variables in WWTPs.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER). Earth and Environmental Systems Science Division
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC02-05CH11231
- OSTI ID:
- 1627687
- Journal Information:
- PLoS ONE, Vol. 9, Issue 3; ISSN 1932-6203
- Publisher:
- Public Library of ScienceCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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