Dataset Information

Mycobacterial species and their contribution to cholesterol degradation in wastewater treatment plants.

ABSTRACT: Mycobacterium often presents as an abundant bacterial genus in activated sludge in many wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), but the species-level taxonomy and functions remain poorly understood. In this study, we profiled the mycobacterial communities in eleven WWTPs from five countries by pyrosequencing the rpoB amplicons and searching against a customized database of mycobacterial rpoB sequences. Results indicated that major mycobacterial species were related to M. brumae, M. crocinum, M. sphagni, etc., most of which belong to poorly characterized rapidly-growing group. A few opportunistic pathogenic species were detected, suggesting the potential risk of mycobacteria in WWTPs. Genomic analysis of four isolates from activated sludge indicated these genomes contained genes of degradations of alkane, aromatics, steroids and a variety of cytochrome P450 families. Additionally, a few key genes responsible for cholesterol degradation were detected in a full-scale activated sludge metatranscriptomic dataset reported previously and taxonomically assigned to mycobacteria. Evidence showed that all isolates can degrade cholesterol, a major composition of sewage. Relative abundance of mycobacteria in activated sludge was enriched by 4.7 folds after adding cholesterol into the influent for one week. Our results provided the insights into mycobacterial species and functions in WWTPs.

SUBMITTER: Guo F

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6351609 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Mycobacterial species and their contribution to cholesterol degradation in wastewater treatment plants.

Guo Feng F Zhang Tong T Li Bing B Wang Zhiping Z Ju Feng F Liang Yi-Ting YT

Scientific reports 20190129 1

Mycobacterium often presents as an abundant bacterial genus in activated sludge in many wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), but the species-level taxonomy and functions remain poorly understood. In this study, we profiled the mycobacterial communities in eleven WWTPs from five countries by pyrosequencing the rpoB amplicons and searching against a customized database of mycobacterial rpoB sequences. Results indicated that major mycobacterial species were related to M. brumae, M. crocinum, M. sph ...[more]

PMID: 30696864

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Project description:It is assumed that microbial communities involved in the biological treatment of different wastewaters having a different chemical composition harbor different microbial populations which are specifically adapted to the environmental stresses encountered in these systems. Yet, little is known about the composition of these microbial communities. Therefore, the aim of this study was to assess the microbial community composition over two seasons (winter and summer) in activated sludge from well-operating textile wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in comparison with municipal WWTPs, and to explain observed differences by environmental variables. 454-pyrosequencing generated 160 archaeal and 1645 bacterial species-level Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs), with lower observed richness in activated sludge from textile WWTPs compared to municipal WWTPs. The bacterial phyla Planctomycetes, Chloroflexi, Chlorobi, and Acidobacteria were more abundant in activated sludge samples from textile WWTPs, together with archaeal members of Thaumarchaeota. Nonmetric multidimensional scaling analysis of the microbial communities showed that microbial communities from textile and municipal WWTPs were significantly different, with a seasonal effect on archaea. Nitrifying and denitrifying bacteria as well as phosphate-accumulation bacteria were more abundant in municipal WWTPs, while sulfate-reducing bacteria were almost only detected in textile WWTPs. Additionally, microbial communities from textile WWTPs were more dissimilar than those of municipal WWTPs, possibly due to a wider diversity in environmental stresses to which microbial communities in textile WWTPs are subjected to. High salinity, high organic loads, and a higher water temperature were important potential variables driving the microbial community composition in textile WWTPs. This study provides a general view on the composition of microbial communities in activated sludge of textile WWTPs, and may provide novel insights for identifying key players performing important functions in the purification of textile wastewaters.

Project description:UnlabelledPatterns in the spatial distribution of organisms provide important information about mechanisms underlying biodiversity and the complexity of ecosystems. One of the most well-documented spatial patterns is the distance-decay relationship, which is a universal biogeographic pattern observed repeatedly for plant and animal communities, particularly for microorganisms in natural ecosystems such as soil, ocean, and salt marsh sediment. However, it is uncertain whether the microorganisms exhibit a distance-decay pattern in engineered ecosystems. Therefore, we measured the distance-decay relationship across various microbial functional and phylogenetic groups in 26 biological wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in China using a functional gene array (GeoChip 4.2). We found that microbial communities of activated sludge in WWTPs exhibited a significant but very weak distance-decay relationship. The taxon-area z values for different functional and phylogenetic groups were <0.0065, which is about 1 to 2 orders of magnitude lower than those observed in microbial communities elsewhere. Variation-partitioning analysis (VPA) showed that the relationships were driven by both environmental heterogeneity and geographic distance. Collectively, these results provided new insights into the spatial scaling of microbial communities in engineering ecosystems and highlighted the importance of environmental heterogeneity and geographic distance in shaping biogeographic patterns.ImportanceDetermining the distance-decay relationship of microbial biodiversity is important but challenging in microbial ecology. All studies to date are based on natural environments; thus, it remains unclear whether there is such a relationship in an engineered ecosystem. The present study shows that there is a very weak distance-decay relationship in an engineered ecosystem (WWTPs) at the regional-to-continental scale. This study makes fundamental contributions to a mechanistic, predictive understanding of microbial biogeography.

Dataset Information

Mycobacterial species and their contribution to cholesterol degradation in wastewater treatment plants.

Publications

Mycobacterial species and their contribution to cholesterol degradation in wastewater treatment plants.

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