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Analysis of microbial community structure and composition in leachates from a young landfill by 454 pyrosequencing

  • Environmental biotechnology
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Abstract

Microorganisms are responsible for degrading the raw leachate generated in sanitary landfills, extracting the soluble fraction of the landfill waste and biotransforming organic matter and toxic residues. To increase our understanding of these highly contaminated ecosystems, we analyzed the microbial communities in the leachate produced by three landfill cells of different ages. Using high-throughput 454 pyrosequencing of the 16S rRNA gene, we describe the structure of the leachate communities and present their compositional characteristics. All three communities exhibited a high level of abundance but were undersampled, as indicated by the results of the rarefaction analysis. The distribution of the taxonomic operational units (OTUs) was highly skewed, suggesting a community structure with a few dominant members that are key for the degradation process and numerous rare microorganisms, which could act as a resilient microorganism seeder pool. Members of the phylum Firmicutes were dominant in all of the samples, accounting for up to 62 % of the bacterial sequences, and their proportion increased with increasing landfill age. Other abundant phyla included Bacteroidetes, Proteobacteria, and Spirochaetes, which together with Firmicutes comprised 90 % of the sequences. The data illustrate a microbial community that degrades organic matter in raw leachate in the early stages, before the methanogenic phase takes place. The genera found fit well into the classical pathways of anaerobic digestion processes.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by grant APQ-1065-3.07/10 from the FACEPE foundation (Fundação de Amparo à Ciência e Tecnologia de Pernambuco) and grants 560389/2010-8 and 481357/2011-4 from the CNPq (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico). We thank the Sanitary Landfill CTR Candeias for the samples and for their cooperation and CENAPAD/ Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, UFPE–Recife for providing the parallel computing resources.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Environmental Sanitation, Department of Civil Engineering, Federal University of Pernambuco, Av. Acadêmico Hélio Ramos, s/n. Cidade Universitária, 50.740-530, Recife, PE, Brazil

    Thorsten Köchling & Lourdinha Florencio

  2. Department of Molecular Biology, Autonomous University of Madrid, 28049, Cantoblanco, Spain

    José Luis Sanz

  3. Laboratory of Environmental Engineering, Federal University of Pernambuco, Academic Center of the Agreste, Rodovia BR-104, Km 62, Nova Caruaru, 55.002-970, PE, Caruaru, Brazil

    Sávia Gavazza

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  1. Thorsten Köchling
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  2. José Luis Sanz
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  3. Sávia Gavazza
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  4. Lourdinha Florencio
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Correspondence to Thorsten Köchling.

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Köchling, T., Sanz, J.L., Gavazza, S. et al. Analysis of microbial community structure and composition in leachates from a young landfill by 454 pyrosequencing. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 99, 5657–5668 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-015-6409-4

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