Global diversity and biogeography of bacterial communities in wastewater treatment plants

Wu, L. et al. (2019) Global diversity and biogeography of bacterial communities in wastewater treatment plants. Nature Microbiology, 4(7), pp. 1183-1195. (doi: 10.1038/s41564-019-0426-5) (PMID:31086312)

Abstract

Microorganisms in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are essential for water purification to protect public and environmental health. However, the diversity of microorganisms and the factors that control it are poorly understood. Using a systematic global-sampling effort, we analysed the 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequences from ~1,200 activated sludge samples taken from 269 WWTPs in 23 countries on 6 continents. Our analyses revealed that the global activated sludge bacterial communities contain ~1 billion bacterial phylotypes with a Poisson lognormal diversity distribution. Despite this high diversity, activated sludge has a small, global core bacterial community (n = 28 operational taxonomic units) that is strongly linked to activated sludge performance. Meta-analyses with global datasets associate the activated sludge microbiomes most closely to freshwater populations. In contrast to macroorganism diversity, activated sludge bacterial communities show no latitudinal gradient. Furthermore, their spatial turnover is scale-dependent and appears to be largely driven by stochastic processes (dispersal and drift), although deterministic factors (temperature and organic input) are also important. Our findings enhance our mechanistic understanding of the global diversity and biogeography of activated sludge bacterial communities within a theoretical ecology framework and have important implications for microbial ecology and wastewater treatment processes.

• Item Type: Articles
• Additional Information: This work was supported by the Tsinghua University Initiative Scientific Research Program (No. 20161080112), the National Scientific Foundation in China (51678335), the State Key Joint Laboratory of Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control (18L02ESPC) in China, and the Office of the Vice President for Research at the University of Oklahoma. Lin.W. and B.Z. were generously supported by the China Scholarship Council (CSC).
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Sloan, Professor William
• Authors: Wu, L., Ning, D., Zhang, B., Li, Y., Zhang, P., Shan, X., Zhang, Q., Brown, M., Li, Z., Van Nostrand, J. D., Ling, F., Xiao, N., Zhang, Y., Vierheilig, J., Wells, G. F., Yang, Y., Deng, Y., Tu, Q., Wang, A., Zhang, T., He, Z., Keller, J., Nielsen, P. H., Alvarez, P. J. J., Criddle, C. S., Wagner, M., Tiedje, J. M., He, Q., Curtis, T. P., Stahl, D. A., Alvarez-Cohen, L., Rittmann, B. E., Wen, X., Zhou, J., and Global Water Microbiome Consortium,
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Engineering > Infrastructure and Environment
• Journal Name: Nature Microbiology
• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
• ISSN: 2058-5276
• ISSN (Online): 2058-5276
• Published Online: 13 May 2019
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2019 The Authors
• First Published: First published in Nature Microbiology 4(7): 1183-1195
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy