The impact of immigration on microbial community composition in full-scale anaerobic digesters.

ABSTRACT: Anaerobic digestion is widely applied to treat organic waste at wastewater treatment plants. Characterisation of the underlying microbiology represents a source of information to develop strategies for improved operation. Hence, we investigated microbial communities of thirty-two full-scale anaerobic digesters over a six-year period using 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. Sampling of the sludge fed into these systems revealed that several of the most abundant populations were likely inactive and immigrating with the influent. This observation indicates that a failure to consider immigration will interfere with correlation analysis and give an inaccurate picture of the growing microbial community. Furthermore, several abundant OTUs could not be classified to genus level with commonly appli

SUBMITTER: Kirkegaard RH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5571154 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature