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Pyrosequencing analysis of bacterial community and assembly in activated sludge samples from different geographic regions in China

  • Environmental biotechnology
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Abstract

In order to investigate if there are geographic differences of bacterial community in the activated sludge collected from different geographic regions (eastern, northwestern, and northern parts) of China and to determine the co-occurrence patterns of bacterial community, activated sludge samples were collected from 10 municipal wastewater treatment plants located in 8 cities in China. High-throughput pyrosequencing combined with the bioinformatics analysis were used to examine the bacterial community compositions in the activated sludge samples. The result of taxonomy classifier indicated that a total of 76 genera were commonly shared by more than 7 samples, which accounted for 62 to 96 % of the classified sequences in each sample. Even though some core genera existed in all examined activated sludge samples regardless of the sampling geographic location and treatment process, significant geographic differences of bacterial community compositions among the activated sludge samples were revealed by the nonmetric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) and analyses of similarity (ANOSIM) analysis. A total of 165 pairs of significant and robust correlations (positive and negative) were identified from 61 bacterial genera based on the network analysis. The data obtained in this study could provide useful information to understand the bacterial community composition in geographically distributed wastewater treatment plants and discern the co-occurrence patterns of bacterial community.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41371098, 41101052, 31225004, and U1202231), Open Fund of State Key Laboratory of Hydrology-Water Resources and Hydraulic Engineering, Hohai University (2013491211) and a Project Funded by the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Hydrology-Water Resources and Hydraulic Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing, 210098, China

    Dayong Zhao & Zhongbo Yu

  2. College of Hydrology and Water Resources, Hohai University, Nanjing, 210098, China

    Dayong Zhao, Rui Huang, Zhongbo Yu & Peng Liu

  3. State Key Laboratory of Lake Science and Environment, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, 210008, China

    Jin Zeng & Qinglong L. Wu

  4. State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resources Reuse, School of the Environment, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093, China

    Shupei Cheng

Authors
  1. Dayong Zhao
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  2. Rui Huang
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  3. Jin Zeng
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  4. Zhongbo Yu
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  5. Peng Liu
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  6. Shupei Cheng
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  7. Qinglong L. Wu
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Correspondence to Jin Zeng.

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Zhao, D., Huang, R., Zeng, J. et al. Pyrosequencing analysis of bacterial community and assembly in activated sludge samples from different geographic regions in China. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 98, 9119–9128 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-014-5920-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-014-5920-3

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