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Metagenomic analysis of sludge from full-scale anaerobic digesters operated in municipal wastewater treatment plants

  • Environmental biotechnology
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Abstract

This study applied Illumina high-throughput sequencing to explore the microbial communities and functions in anaerobic digestion sludge (ADS) from two wastewater treatment plants based on a metagenomic view. Taxonomic analysis using SILVA SSU database indicated that Proteobacteria (9.52–13.50 %), Bacteroidetes (7.18 %–10.65 %) and Firmicutes (7.53 %–9.46 %) were the most abundant phyla in the ADS. Differences of microbial communities between the two types of ADS were identified. Genera of Methanosaeta and Methanosarcina were the major methanogens. Functional analysis by SEED subsystems showed that the basic metabolic functions of metagenomes in the four ADS samples had no significant difference among them, but they were different from other microbial communities from activated sludge, human faeces, ocean and soil. Abundances of genes in methanogenesis pathway were also quantified using a methanogenesis genes database extracted from KEGG. Results showed that acetotrophic was the major methanogenic pathway in the anaerobic sludge digestion.

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Acknowledgments

This work is supported by Hong Kong General Research Fund (7198/10E). Ying Yang, Ke Yu, and Yu Xia thank The University of Hong Kong for the postgraduate studentship. We thank the Drainage Services Department of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region for their support for this study.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Environmental Biotechnology Laboratory, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Ying Yang, Ke Yu, Yu Xia, Herbert H. P. Fang & Tong Zhang

  2. Drainage Services Department, Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Hong Kong, China

    Frankie T. K. Lau, Daniel T. W. Tang & Wing Cheong Fung

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  1. Ying Yang
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  2. Ke Yu
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Correspondence to Tong Zhang.

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Yang, Y., Yu, K., Xia, Y. et al. Metagenomic analysis of sludge from full-scale anaerobic digesters operated in municipal wastewater treatment plants. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 98, 5709–5718 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-014-5648-0

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