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Long-term monitoring reveals stable and remarkably similar microbial communities in parallel full-scale biogas reactors digesting energy crops.
- Source :
-
FEMS microbiology ecology [FEMS Microbiol Ecol] 2015 Mar; Vol. 91 (3). Date of Electronic Publication: 2015 Jan 11. - Publication Year :
- 2015
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Abstract
- Biogas is an important renewable energy carrier. It is a product of stepwise anaerobic degradation of organic materials by highly diverse microbial communities forming complex interlinking metabolic networks. Knowledge about the microbial background of long-term stable process performance in full-scale reactors is crucial for rationally improving the efficiency and reliability of biogas plants. To generate such knowledge, in the present study three parallel mesophilic full-scale reactors fed exclusively with energy crops were sampled weekly over one year. Physicochemical process parameters were determined and the microbial communities were analysed by terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) fingerprinting and 454-amplicon sequencing. For investigating the methanogenic community, a high-resolution T-RFLP approach based on the mcrA gene was developed by selecting restriction enzymes with improved taxonomic resolution compared to previous studies. Interestingly, no Methanosarcina-related generalists, but rather specialized hydrogenotrophic and acetoclastic methanogenic taxa were detected. In general, the microbial communities in the non-connected reactors were remarkably stable and highly similar indicating that identical environmental and process parameters resulted in identical microbial assemblages and dynamics. Practical implications such as flexible operation schemes comprising controlled variations of process parameters for an efficient microbial resource management under fluctuating process conditions are discussed.<br /> (© FEMS 2015. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)
- Subjects :
- Actinobacteria genetics
Actinobacteria metabolism
Base Sequence
Chloroflexi genetics
Chloroflexi metabolism
Clostridium genetics
Clostridium metabolism
Crops, Agricultural microbiology
DNA Restriction Enzymes genetics
DNA, Archaeal genetics
Euryarchaeota genetics
Euryarchaeota metabolism
Lactobacillus genetics
Lactobacillus metabolism
Microbiota physiology
Phylogeny
Polymorphism, Restriction Fragment Length
Reproducibility of Results
Sequence Analysis, DNA
Streptococcus genetics
Streptococcus metabolism
Zea mays microbiology
Biofuels microbiology
Bioreactors microbiology
Crops, Agricultural metabolism
Euryarchaeota classification
Zea mays metabolism
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 1574-6941
- Volume :
- 91
- Issue :
- 3
- Database :
- MEDLINE
- Journal :
- FEMS microbiology ecology
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 25764564
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1093/femsec/fiv004