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Whole community metagenomics in two different anammox configurations-process performance and community structure
Citation:
Bhattacharjee, A., S. Wu, C. Lawson, M. Jetten, V. Kapoor, J. Santodomingo, K. McMahon, D. Noguera, AND R. Goel. Whole community metagenomics in two different anammox configurations-process performance and community structure. ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY. American Chemical Society, Washington, DC, 51(8):4317-4327, (2017).
Impact/Purpose:
There is an increasing interest for energy neutrality and resource positivity in municipal wastewater treatment plants (WTTPs). As a result, the wastewater community is proactive in embracing new treatment technologies that rely on minimum aeration and smaller carbon footprints. In this regard, the anaerobic ammonia oxidation (anammox) process has evolved as a powerful tool to address energy autarky and carbon footprint. Anammox is the oxidation of ammonia nitrogen to nitrogen gas with nitrite as an electron acceptor. The anammox reaction forms a “shortcut” within the N-cycle by converting ammonium and nitrite directly to nitrogen gas, without having nitrate as an intermediate in the process. This reduces oxygen demand and organic carbon requirements. Within the last decade, wastewater practitioners have accelerated adoption of anammox systems with many full scale anammox plants already successfully running in Europe and several being planned in the United States. Anammox provides a more sustainable solution to the need for energy autarky and smaller carbon footprints of modern WWTPs than conventional aerobic nitrification and heterotrophic denitrification.
Description:
Anaerobic ammonia oxidation (anammox) combined with partial nitritation (PN) is an innovative treatment process for energy-efficient nitrogen removal from wastewater. We used genome based metagenomics to uncover the overall community structure and anammox lineages enriched in suspended growth (SGR) and attached growth packed bed (AGR) anammox reactors. SGR and AGR were operated in parallel for 220 days. Both reactors achieved greater than 85% total inorganic nitrogen removal over the whole experimental period. Phylogenetic analysis revealed anammox lineages in both reactors were closely related to Candidatus Brocadia sinica and Candidatus Brocadia fulgida with dominant flanking community of Anaerolinea, Ignavibacterium, and Rhodocyclaceae. Genome based ecology of the reactors yielded one anammox lineage from each reactor. Both anammox lineages were related to species belonging to genus Candidatus Brocadia. Therefore, our work expands the known diversity of organisms classified under genus Ca’ Brocadia. Genome analysis of the anammox lineages recovered indicates that they are tuned to survive in inorganic rich nitrogen environments.
URLs/Downloads:
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.est.6b05855
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