Project description:Membrane bioreactor (MBR) systems are typically known different from conventional activated sludge (CAS) systems in operational parameters, while current knowledge of their microbial differentiations is barely sufficient. To this end, the current study was launched to address the differences of the overall functional genes of an oxidation ditch (OD) and an MBR running parallelly at full-scale using a functional gene array-GeoChip 4.2. Two full-scale wastewater treatment systems applying the processes of oxidation ditch (OD) and membrane bioreactor (MBR) were investigated. They treated identical wastewater at the same scale. 12 mixed-liquor suspended sludge (MLSS) samples collected daily on 12 consecutive days from each system were analyzed by GeoChip 4.2.
Project description:In this study the impact of protein fractionation techniques prior to LC/MS analysis was investigated on activated sludge samples derived at winter and summer condition from a full-scale wastewater treatment plant (WWTP). For reduction of the sample complexity, different fractionation techniques including RP-LC (1D-approach), SDS-PAGE and RP-LC (2D-approach) as well as RP-LC, SDS-PAGE and liquid IEF (3D-approach) were carried out before subsequent ITMS analysis. The derived spectra were identified by MASCOT search using a combination of the public UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot protein database and metagenome data from a WWTP (data are available via ProteomeXchange with identifier PXD001547). The results showed a significant increase of identified spectra, enabled by applying IEF and SDS-PAGE to the proteomic workflow. Based on meta-proteins, a core metaproteome and the corresponding taxonomic profile of the wastewater activated sludge was revealed and functional aspects using the KEGG (Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes) pathway library were analyzed. Hereby, the KEGG Orthology identifiers (KO numbers) of protein hits were plotted into pathway maps of the central carbon (map01200) and nitrogen metabolism (map00910). Using the 3D-approach, most proteins involved in glycolysis and citrate cycle and nearly all proteins of the nitrogen removal were identified, qualifying this approach as the most promising for future studies.
Project description:To understand microbial community functional structures of activated sludge in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and the effects of environmental factors on their structure, 12 activated sludge samples were collected from four WWTPs in Beijing. GeoChip 4.2 was used to determine the microbial functional genes involved in a variety of biogeochemical processes. The results showed that, for each gene category, such as egl, amyA, nir, ppx, dsrA sox and benAB, there were a number of microorganisms shared by all 12 samples, suggestive of the presence of a core microbial community in the activated sludge of four WWTPs. Variance partitioning analyses (VPA) showed that a total of 53% of microbial community variation can be explained by wastewater characteristics (25%) and operational parameters (23%), respectively. 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. Four full-scale wastewater treatment systems located in Beijing were investigated. Triplicate samples were collected in each site.