Abstract
Bacteria are primary agents of organic substrate metabolisation and elemental cycling in landfills. Two major bacterial groups, namely, Gram-positive (GP) and Gram-negative (GN), drive independent metabolic functions that contribute to waste stabilisation. There is a lack of explicit exploration of how these different bacterial guilds respond to changing carbon (C) availability and substrate depletion as landfills age and how landfill geochemistry regulates their distribution. This study investigated and compared the abundance and vertical distribution of GP and GN bacteria in 14- and 36-year-old municipal landfills and explored linkages among bacterial groups, nutrient elements, heavy metals and soil texture. We found higher GP bacteria in the 14-year-old landfill, while GN bacteria dominated the 36-year-old landfill. The non-metric multidimensional scaling (nMDS) analysis showed that dissimilarities in the relative abundance of the GP and GN bacteria were linked distinctly to landfill age, and not depth. In support of this inference, we further found that GP and GN bacteria were negatively correlated with heavy metals and essential nutrients in the 14- and 36-year-old landfills, respectively. Notably, the GP/GN ratio, an indicator of relative C available for bacterial mineralisation, was greater in the14-year-old landfill, suggesting greater C availability. Conversely, the C to N ratio was higher in the 36-year-old landfill, indicating lower N mineralisation. Collectively, the results of the study reveal key insights into how landfill ageing and stabilisation influence distinct functional shifts in the abundance of GP and GN bacteria, and these are mainly driven by changes in C and N bioavailability.
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Data availability
The data obtained from the high-throughput sequencing of bacterial DNA are available in the NCBI Sequence Read Archive database (accession number PRJNA563044).
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to acknowledge the Postdoctoral and Visiting Research fellowships awarded to Dr Lerato Sekhohola-Dlamini and Dr Henry Ogola, respectively, by the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences at the University of South Africa (UNISA). The authors would also like to thank the Mogale City municipal authorities for granting permission to collect samples and the Centre for High Performance Computing that provided the high computing facility for the metagenomic analysis.
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The research was funded by the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at the University of South Africa (UNISA).
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Sekhohola-Dlamini, L., Dlamini, P., Selvarajan, R. et al. Influences of geochemical factors and substrate availability on Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacterial distribution and bio-processes in ageing municipal landfills. Int Microbiol 24, 311–324 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10123-021-00167-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10123-021-00167-z