TY - JOUR
T1 - Linkages between microbial functional potential and wastewater constituents in large-scale membrane bioreactors for municipal wastewater treatment
AU - Sun, Yanmei
AU - Shen, Yue xiao
AU - Liang, Peng
AU - Zhou, Jizhong
AU - Yang, Yunfeng
AU - Huang, Xia
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Science Fund for Creative Research Groups (No. 21221004 ) and the Major Science and Technology Program for Water Pollution Control and Treatment (No. 2011ZX07301-002 ).
PY - 2014/6/1
Y1 - 2014/6/1
N2 - Large-scale membrane bioreactors (MBRs) have been widely used for the municipal wastewater treatment, whose performance relies on microbial communities of activated sludge. Nevertheless, microbial functional structures in MBRs remain little understood. To gain insight into functional genes and their steering environmental factors, we adopted GeoChip, a high-throughput microarray-based tool, to examine microbial genes in four large-scale, in-operation MBRs located in Beijing, China. The results revealed substantial microbial gene heterogeneity (43.7-85.1% overlaps) among different MBRs. Mantel tests indicated that microbial nutrient cycling genes were significantly (P<0.05) correlated to influent COD, NH4+-N, TP or sulfate, which signified the importance of microbial mediation of wastewater constituent removal. In addition, functional genes shared by all four MBRs contained a large number of genes involved in antibiotics resistance, metal resistance and organic remediation, suggesting that they were required for degradation or resistance to toxic compounds in wastewater. The linkages between microbial functional structures and environmental variables were also unveiled by the finding of hydraulic retention time, influent COD, NH4+-N, mixed liquid temperature and humic substances as major factors shaping microbial communities. Together, the results presented demonstrate the utility of GeoChip-based microarray approach in examining microbial communities of wastewater treatment plants and provide insights into the forces driving important processes of element cycling.
AB - Large-scale membrane bioreactors (MBRs) have been widely used for the municipal wastewater treatment, whose performance relies on microbial communities of activated sludge. Nevertheless, microbial functional structures in MBRs remain little understood. To gain insight into functional genes and their steering environmental factors, we adopted GeoChip, a high-throughput microarray-based tool, to examine microbial genes in four large-scale, in-operation MBRs located in Beijing, China. The results revealed substantial microbial gene heterogeneity (43.7-85.1% overlaps) among different MBRs. Mantel tests indicated that microbial nutrient cycling genes were significantly (P<0.05) correlated to influent COD, NH4+-N, TP or sulfate, which signified the importance of microbial mediation of wastewater constituent removal. In addition, functional genes shared by all four MBRs contained a large number of genes involved in antibiotics resistance, metal resistance and organic remediation, suggesting that they were required for degradation or resistance to toxic compounds in wastewater. The linkages between microbial functional structures and environmental variables were also unveiled by the finding of hydraulic retention time, influent COD, NH4+-N, mixed liquid temperature and humic substances as major factors shaping microbial communities. Together, the results presented demonstrate the utility of GeoChip-based microarray approach in examining microbial communities of wastewater treatment plants and provide insights into the forces driving important processes of element cycling.
KW - Functional genes
KW - GeoChip
KW - Membrane bioreactor
KW - Municipal wastewater
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84896597880&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.watres.2014.03.003
DO - 10.1016/j.watres.2014.03.003
M3 - Article
C2 - 24675272
AN - SCOPUS:84896597880
SN - 0043-1354
VL - 56
SP - 162
EP - 171
JO - Water Research
JF - Water Research
ER -