Characterization and composition of ammonia-oxidizing bacterial community in full-scale wastewater treatment bioreactors [Korean Source]

Abstract

Ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) are chemolithoautotrophs that play a key role in nitrogen removal from advanced wastewater treatment processes. Various AOB species inhabit and their community compositions vary over time in the wastewater treatment bioreactors. In this study, a hypothesis that operational and environmental conditions affect both the community compositions and the diversity of AOB in the bioreactors was proposed. To verify the hypothesis, the clone libraries based on ammonia monooxygenase subunit A were constructed using activated sludge samples from aerobic bioreactors at the Pohang, the Palo Alto, the Nine Springs, and the Marshall wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). In those bioreactors, AOB within the Nitrosomonas europaea, N. oligotropha, N.-like, and Nitrosospira lineages were commonly found, while AOB within the N. communis, N. marina, and N. cryotolerans lineages were rarely detected in the samples. The AOB community structures were different in the bioreactors: AOB within the N. oligotropha lineage were the major microorganisms in the Pohang, the Palo Alto, and the Marshall WWTPs, while AOB within the N. europaea lineage were dominant in the Nine Springs WWTP. The correlations between the AOB community compositions of the wastewater treatment bioreactors and their operational (HRT, SRT, and MLSS) and environmental conditions (temperature, pH, COD, NH3, and NO3 -) were evaluated using a multivariate statistical analysis called the Redundancy Analysis (RDA). As a result, COD and NO3 - concentrations in the bioreactors were the statistically significant variables influencing the AOB community structures in the wastewater treatment bioreactors. © 2009, The Microbiological Society of Korea.