Project description:Biogas plants (BGPs) produce methane and carbon dioxide through the anaerobic digestion of agricultural waste. Identification of strategies for more stable biogas plant operation and increased biogas yields require better knowledge about the individual degradation steps and the interactions within the microbial communities. The metaprotein profiles of ten agricultural BGPs and one laboratory reactor were investigated using a metaproteomics pipeline. Fractionation of samples using SDS-PAGE was combined with a high resolution Orbitrap mass spectrometer, metagenome sequences specific for BGPs, and the MetaProteomeAnalyzer software. This enabled us to achieve a high coverage of the metaproteome of the BGP microbial communities. The investigation revealed approx. 17,000 protein groups (metaproteins), covering the majority of the expected metabolic networks of the biogas process such as hydrolysis, transport, fermentation processes, amino acid metabolism, methanogenesis and bacterial C1-metabolism. Biological functions could be linked with the taxonomic composition. Two different types of BGPs were classified by the abundance of the acetoclastic methanogenesis and by abundance of enzymes implicating syntrophic acetate oxidation. Linking of the identified metaproteins with the process steps of the Anaerobic Digestion Model 1 proved the main model assumptions but indicated also some improvements such as considering syntrophic acetate oxidation. Beside the syntrophic interactions, the microbial communities in BGPs are also shaped by competition for substrates and host-phage interactions causing cell lysis. In particular, larger amounts of Bacteriophages for the bacterial families Bacillaceae, Enterobacteriaceae and Clostridiaceae, exceeding the cell number of the Bacteria by approximately four-fold. In contrast, less Bacteriophages were found for Archaea, but more CRISPR proteins were detected. On the one hand, the virus induced turnover of biomass might cause slow degradation of complex biomass in BGP. On the other hand, the lysis of bacterial cells allows cycling of essential nutrients.
Project description:BackgroundDecomposition of biomass for biogas production can be practiced under wet and dry fermentation conditions. In contrast to the dry fermentation technology, wet fermentation is characterized by a high liquid content and a relatively low total solid content. In this study, the composition and functional potential of a biogas-producing microbial community in an agricultural biogas reactor operating under wet fermentation conditions was analyzed by a metagenomic approach applying 454-pyrosequencing. The obtained metagenomic dataset and corresponding 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequences were compared to the previously sequenced comparable metagenome from a dry fermentation process, meeting explicitly identical boundary conditions regarding sample and community DNA preparation, sequencing technology, processing of sequence reads and data analyses by bioinformatics tools.ResultsHigh-throughput metagenome sequencing of community DNA from the wet fermentation process applying the pyrosequencing approach resulted in 1,532,780 reads, with an average read length of 397 bp, accounting for approximately 594 million bases of sequence information in total. Taxonomic comparison of the communities from wet and dry fermentation revealed similar microbial profiles with Bacteria being the predominant superkingdom, while the superkingdom Archaea was less abundant. In both biogas plants, the bacterial phyla Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, Spirochaetes and Proteobacteria were identified with descending frequencies. Within the archaeal superkingdom, the phylum Euryarchaeota was most abundant with the dominant class Methanomicrobia. Functional profiles of the communities revealed that environmental gene tags representing methanogenesis enzymes were present in both biogas plants in comparable frequencies. 16S rRNA gene amplicon high-throughput sequencing disclosed differences in the sub-communities comprising methanogenic Archaea between both processes. Fragment recruitments of metagenomic reads to the reference genome of the archaeon Methanoculleus bourgensis MS2(T) revealed that dominant methanogens within the dry fermentation process were highly related to the reference.ConclusionsAlthough process parameters, substrates and technology differ between the wet and dry biogas fermentations analyzed in this study, community profiles are very similar at least at higher taxonomic ranks, illustrating that core community taxa perform key functions in biomass decomposition and methane synthesis. Regarding methanogenesis, Archaea highly related to the type strain M. bourgensis MS2(T) dominate the dry fermentation process, suggesting the adaptation of members belonging to this species to specific fermentation process parameters.
