TY - JOUR
T1 - Diversity study of nitrifying bacteria in full-scale municipal wastewater treatment plants
AU - Siripong, Slil
AU - Rittmann, Bruce
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors wish to thank Heng Zhang and Geeta Rijal at Stickney WRP for providing us activated-sludge samples. Hee-Deung Park at University of Wisconsin, Madison helped us with amoA-based T-RFLP. This research was funded by a grant from DARPA.
Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2007/3
Y1 - 2007/3
N2 - We hypothesize that activated-sludge processes having stable and complete nitrification have significant and similar diversity and functional redundancy among its ammonia- and nitrite-oxidizing bacteria, despite differences in temperature, solids retention time (SRT), and other operating conditions. To evaluate this hypothesis, we examined the diversity of nitrifying bacterial communities in all seven water-reclamation plants (WRPs) operated by Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRDGC). These plants vary in types of influent waste stream, plant size, water temperature, and SRT. We used terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) targeting the 16S rRNA gene and group-specific ammonia-monooxygenase functional gene (amoA) to investigate these hard-to-culture nitrifying bacteria in the full-scale WRPs. We demonstrate that nitrifying bacteria carrying out the same metabolism coexist in all WRPs studied. We found ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) belonging to the Nitrosomonas europaea/eutropha, Nitrosomonas oligotropha, Nitrosomonas communis, and Nitrosospira lineages in all plants. We also observed coexisting Nitrobacter and Nitrospira genera for nitrite-oxidizing bacteria (NOB). Among the factors that varied among the WRPs, only the seasonal temperature variation seemed to change the nitrifying community, especially the balance between Nitrosospira and Nitrosomonas, although both coexisted in winter and summer samples. The coexistence of various nitrifiers in all WRPs is evidence of functional redundancy, a feature that may help maintain the stability of the system for nitrification.
AB - We hypothesize that activated-sludge processes having stable and complete nitrification have significant and similar diversity and functional redundancy among its ammonia- and nitrite-oxidizing bacteria, despite differences in temperature, solids retention time (SRT), and other operating conditions. To evaluate this hypothesis, we examined the diversity of nitrifying bacterial communities in all seven water-reclamation plants (WRPs) operated by Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRDGC). These plants vary in types of influent waste stream, plant size, water temperature, and SRT. We used terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) targeting the 16S rRNA gene and group-specific ammonia-monooxygenase functional gene (amoA) to investigate these hard-to-culture nitrifying bacteria in the full-scale WRPs. We demonstrate that nitrifying bacteria carrying out the same metabolism coexist in all WRPs studied. We found ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) belonging to the Nitrosomonas europaea/eutropha, Nitrosomonas oligotropha, Nitrosomonas communis, and Nitrosospira lineages in all plants. We also observed coexisting Nitrobacter and Nitrospira genera for nitrite-oxidizing bacteria (NOB). Among the factors that varied among the WRPs, only the seasonal temperature variation seemed to change the nitrifying community, especially the balance between Nitrosospira and Nitrosomonas, although both coexisted in winter and summer samples. The coexistence of various nitrifiers in all WRPs is evidence of functional redundancy, a feature that may help maintain the stability of the system for nitrification.
KW - Activated sludge
KW - Diversity
KW - Functional redundancy
KW - Nitrifiers
KW - T-RFLP
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U2 - 10.1016/j.watres.2006.11.050
DO - 10.1016/j.watres.2006.11.050
M3 - Article
C2 - 17254627
AN - SCOPUS:33846820191
SN - 0043-1354
VL - 41
SP - 1110
EP - 1120
JO - Water Research
JF - Water Research
IS - 5
ER -