Biogas productivity of anaerobic digestion process is governed by a core bacterial microbiota

Yu Tao; Mustafa Evren Ersahin; Dara S.M. Ghasimi; Hale Ozgun; Haoyu Wang; Xuedong Zhang; Miao Guo; Yunfeng Yang; David C. Stuckey; Jules B. van Lier

doi:10.1016/j.cej.2019.122425

Biogas productivity of anaerobic digestion process is governed by a core bacterial microbiota

Yu Tao, Mustafa Evren Ersahin, Dara S.M. Ghasimi, Hale Ozgun, Haoyu Wang, Xuedong Zhang, Miao Guo, Yunfeng Yang, David C. Stuckey^*, Jules B. van Lier

^*Corresponding author for this work

Department of Environmental Engineering

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

81 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Anaerobic digestion (AD) has been commercially operated worldwide in full scale as a resource recovery technology underpinning a circular economy. However, problems such as a long start-up time, or system instability, have been reported in response to operational shocks. These issues are usually linked to the dynamics of the functional microbiota in AD. Exploring the microbiota-functionality nexus (MFN) could be pivotal to understand the reasons behind these difficulties, and hence improving AD performance. Here we present a systematic MFN study based on 138 samples taken from 20 well-profiled lab-scale AD reactors operated for up to two years. All the reactors were operated in the same lab within the same period of time using the same methodology to harvest physio-chemical and molecular data, including key monitoring parameters, qPCR, and 16S sequencing results. The results showed a core bacterial microbiota prevailing in all reactor types, including Bacillus, Clostridium, Bacteroides, Eubacterium, Cytophaga, Anaerophaga, and Syntrophomonas, while various methanogens dominated different communities due to different inocula origins, reactor temperatures, or salinity levels. This core bacterial microbiota well correlated with biogas production (Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.481, p < 0.0001). Such strong correlation was even comparable to that between the biogas production and the methanogenic 16S rRNA gene content (Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.481, p < 0.0001). The results indicated that AD performance only modestly correlated with microbial diversity, a key governing factor. AD microbiota was neither functionally redundant nor plastic, and a high variety in communities can exhibit a strong difference in reactor performance. Our study demonstrates the importance of a core bacterial microbiota in AD and supports inspiring considerations for design, bioaugmentation, and operational strategies of AD reactors in the future.

Original language	English
Article number	122425
Journal	Chemical Engineering Journal
Volume	380
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cej.2019.122425
Publication status	Published - 15 Jan 2020

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Elsevier B.V.

Funding

This study was funded by a research grant from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) of the UK (grant number BB/K003240/2 ). The authors would like to express their gratitude for the Ph.D. Fellowship awards provided by the Turkish Academy of Sciences (TUBA) to HO, by HUYGENS Scholarship Program to MEE. This study was funded by a research grant from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) of the UK (grant number BB/K003240/2). The authors would like to express their gratitude for the Ph.D. Fellowship awards provided by the Turkish Academy of Sciences (TUBA) to HO, by HUYGENS Scholarship Program to MEE. The authors would like to thank Prof Merle de Kreuk and Prof Henri Spanjers from the Delft University of Technology for guiding the operation of the reactors, and analysing data. The authors would also like to thank Dr. Margarida Temudo and Dr. Margot Schooneveld and their research team at the DSM Biotechnology Center for supplying valuable materials for ENDs. Full sequencing data are available online in the NCBI database (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Traces/study/?acc=SRP115101). YT applied molecular analysis, contributed to the analytical measurement of the samples from the EGSBs, UASBs, and DAnMBRs, and assisted in operating the EGSBs. MEE, DSMG, HO, HW, and XZ contributed equally to this work. They operated the DAnMBRs, FSDs, UASBs, EGSBs, and HSDs, respectively, and measured the parameters of each AD reactor. MG contributed to the microbiota-functionality statistical analysis, while YY, DCS, and JvL raised critical comments and significantly improved the manuscript. All the authors approved the submission of the final-version manuscript. The authors declare that they have no competing of interests.

Funders	Funder number
TUBA
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council	BB/K003240/2
Technische Universiteit Delft
Türkiye Bilimler Akademisi

Keywords

Anaerobic digestion
Biogas
Bioreactor
Microbiota

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10.1016/j.cej.2019.122425

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title = "Biogas productivity of anaerobic digestion process is governed by a core bacterial microbiota",

abstract = "Anaerobic digestion (AD) has been commercially operated worldwide in full scale as a resource recovery technology underpinning a circular economy. However, problems such as a long start-up time, or system instability, have been reported in response to operational shocks. These issues are usually linked to the dynamics of the functional microbiota in AD. Exploring the microbiota-functionality nexus (MFN) could be pivotal to understand the reasons behind these difficulties, and hence improving AD performance. Here we present a systematic MFN study based on 138 samples taken from 20 well-profiled lab-scale AD reactors operated for up to two years. All the reactors were operated in the same lab within the same period of time using the same methodology to harvest physio-chemical and molecular data, including key monitoring parameters, qPCR, and 16S sequencing results. The results showed a core bacterial microbiota prevailing in all reactor types, including Bacillus, Clostridium, Bacteroides, Eubacterium, Cytophaga, Anaerophaga, and Syntrophomonas, while various methanogens dominated different communities due to different inocula origins, reactor temperatures, or salinity levels. This core bacterial microbiota well correlated with biogas production (Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.481, p < 0.0001). Such strong correlation was even comparable to that between the biogas production and the methanogenic 16S rRNA gene content (Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.481, p < 0.0001). The results indicated that AD performance only modestly correlated with microbial diversity, a key governing factor. AD microbiota was neither functionally redundant nor plastic, and a high variety in communities can exhibit a strong difference in reactor performance. Our study demonstrates the importance of a core bacterial microbiota in AD and supports inspiring considerations for design, bioaugmentation, and operational strategies of AD reactors in the future.",

keywords = "Anaerobic digestion, Biogas, Bioreactor, Microbiota",

author = "Yu Tao and Ersahin, {Mustafa Evren} and Ghasimi, {Dara S.M.} and Hale Ozgun and Haoyu Wang and Xuedong Zhang and Miao Guo and Yunfeng Yang and Stuckey, {David C.} and {van Lier}, {Jules B.}",

note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2019 Elsevier B.V.",

year = "2020",

month = jan,

day = "15",

doi = "10.1016/j.cej.2019.122425",

language = "English",

volume = "380",

journal = "Chemical Engineering Journal",

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T1 - Biogas productivity of anaerobic digestion process is governed by a core bacterial microbiota

AU - Tao, Yu

AU - Ersahin, Mustafa Evren

AU - Ghasimi, Dara S.M.

AU - Ozgun, Hale

AU - Wang, Haoyu

AU - Zhang, Xuedong

AU - Guo, Miao

AU - Yang, Yunfeng

AU - Stuckey, David C.

AU - van Lier, Jules B.

PY - 2020/1/15

Y1 - 2020/1/15

N2 - Anaerobic digestion (AD) has been commercially operated worldwide in full scale as a resource recovery technology underpinning a circular economy. However, problems such as a long start-up time, or system instability, have been reported in response to operational shocks. These issues are usually linked to the dynamics of the functional microbiota in AD. Exploring the microbiota-functionality nexus (MFN) could be pivotal to understand the reasons behind these difficulties, and hence improving AD performance. Here we present a systematic MFN study based on 138 samples taken from 20 well-profiled lab-scale AD reactors operated for up to two years. All the reactors were operated in the same lab within the same period of time using the same methodology to harvest physio-chemical and molecular data, including key monitoring parameters, qPCR, and 16S sequencing results. The results showed a core bacterial microbiota prevailing in all reactor types, including Bacillus, Clostridium, Bacteroides, Eubacterium, Cytophaga, Anaerophaga, and Syntrophomonas, while various methanogens dominated different communities due to different inocula origins, reactor temperatures, or salinity levels. This core bacterial microbiota well correlated with biogas production (Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.481, p < 0.0001). Such strong correlation was even comparable to that between the biogas production and the methanogenic 16S rRNA gene content (Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.481, p < 0.0001). The results indicated that AD performance only modestly correlated with microbial diversity, a key governing factor. AD microbiota was neither functionally redundant nor plastic, and a high variety in communities can exhibit a strong difference in reactor performance. Our study demonstrates the importance of a core bacterial microbiota in AD and supports inspiring considerations for design, bioaugmentation, and operational strategies of AD reactors in the future.

AB - Anaerobic digestion (AD) has been commercially operated worldwide in full scale as a resource recovery technology underpinning a circular economy. However, problems such as a long start-up time, or system instability, have been reported in response to operational shocks. These issues are usually linked to the dynamics of the functional microbiota in AD. Exploring the microbiota-functionality nexus (MFN) could be pivotal to understand the reasons behind these difficulties, and hence improving AD performance. Here we present a systematic MFN study based on 138 samples taken from 20 well-profiled lab-scale AD reactors operated for up to two years. All the reactors were operated in the same lab within the same period of time using the same methodology to harvest physio-chemical and molecular data, including key monitoring parameters, qPCR, and 16S sequencing results. The results showed a core bacterial microbiota prevailing in all reactor types, including Bacillus, Clostridium, Bacteroides, Eubacterium, Cytophaga, Anaerophaga, and Syntrophomonas, while various methanogens dominated different communities due to different inocula origins, reactor temperatures, or salinity levels. This core bacterial microbiota well correlated with biogas production (Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.481, p < 0.0001). Such strong correlation was even comparable to that between the biogas production and the methanogenic 16S rRNA gene content (Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.481, p < 0.0001). The results indicated that AD performance only modestly correlated with microbial diversity, a key governing factor. AD microbiota was neither functionally redundant nor plastic, and a high variety in communities can exhibit a strong difference in reactor performance. Our study demonstrates the importance of a core bacterial microbiota in AD and supports inspiring considerations for design, bioaugmentation, and operational strategies of AD reactors in the future.

KW - Anaerobic digestion

KW - Biogas

KW - Bioreactor

KW - Microbiota

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DO - 10.1016/j.cej.2019.122425

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85070271219

SN - 1385-8947

VL - 380

JO - Chemical Engineering Journal

JF - Chemical Engineering Journal

M1 - 122425

ER -

Biogas productivity of anaerobic digestion process is governed by a core bacterial microbiota

Abstract

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Keywords

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