Dataset Information

Microbial functional trait of rRNA operon copy numbers increases with organic levels in anaerobic digesters.

ABSTRACT: The ecological concept of the r-K life history strategy is widely applied in macro-ecology to characterize functional traits of taxa. However, its adoption in microbial communities is limited, owing to the lack of a measureable, convenient functional trait for classification. In this study, we performed an experiment of stepwise organic amendments in triplicate anaerobic digesters. We found that high resource availability significantly favored microbial r-strategists such as Bacillus spp. Incremental resource availability heightened average rRNA operon copy number of microbial community, resulting in a strong, positive correlation (r>0.74, P<0.008). This study quantifies how resource availability manipulations influence microbial community composition and supports the idea that rRNA operon copy number is an ecologically meaningful trait which reflects resource availability.

SUBMITTER: Wu L

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5702740 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Microbial functional trait of rRNA operon copy numbers increases with organic levels in anaerobic digesters.

Wu Linwei L Yang Yunfeng Y Chen Si S Jason Shi Zhou Z Zhao Mengxin M Zhu Zhenwei Z Yang Sihang S Qu Yuanyuan Y Ma Qiao Q He Zhili Z Zhou Jizhong J He Qiang Q

The ISME journal 20170825 12

The ecological concept of the r-K life history strategy is widely applied in macro-ecology to characterize functional traits of taxa. However, its adoption in microbial communities is limited, owing to the lack of a measureable, convenient functional trait for classification. In this study, we performed an experiment of stepwise organic amendments in triplicate anaerobic digesters. We found that high resource availability significantly favored microbial r-strategists such as Bacillus spp. Increm ...[more]

PMID: 28841202

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Project description:BackgroundVolatile fatty acid intoxication (acidosis), a common process failure recorded in anaerobic reactors, leads to drastic losses in methane production. Unfortunately, little is known about the microbial mechanisms underlining acidosis and the potential to recover the process. In this study, triplicate mesophilic anaerobic reactors of 100 L were exposed to acidosis resulting from an excessive feeding with sugar beet pulp and were compared to a steady-state reactor.ResultsStable operational conditions at the beginning of the experiment initially led to similar microbial populations in the four reactors, as revealed by 16S rRNA gene T-RFLP and high-throughput amplicon sequencing. Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes were the two dominant phyla, and although they were represented by a high number of operational taxonomic units, only a few were dominant. Once the environment became deterministic (selective pressure from an increased substrate feeding), microbial populations started to diverge between the overfed reactors. Interestingly, most of bacteria and archaea showed redundant functional adaptation to the changing environmental conditions. However, the dominant Bacteroidales were resistant to high volatile fatty acids content and low pH. The severe acidosis did not eradicate archaea and a clear shift in archaeal populations from acetotrophic to hydrogenotrophic methanogenesis occurred in the overfed reactors. After 11 days of severe acidosis (pH 5.2 ± 0.4), the process was quickly recovered (restoration of the biogas production with methane content above 50 %) in the overfed reactors, by adjusting the pH to around 7 using NaOH and NaHCO3.ConclusionsIn this study we show that once the replicate reactors are confronted with sub-optimal conditions, their microbial populations start to evolve differentially. Furthermore the alterations of commonly used microbial parameters to monitor the process, such as richness, evenness and diversity indices were unsuccessful to predict the process failure. At the same time, we tentatively propose the replacement of the dominant Methanosaeta sp. in this case by Methanoculleus sp., to be a potential warning indicator of acidosis.

Dataset Information

Microbial functional trait of rRNA operon copy numbers increases with organic levels in anaerobic digesters.

Publications

Microbial functional trait of rRNA operon copy numbers increases with organic levels in anaerobic digesters.

Similar Datasets

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