scholarly journals Structure and Functions of Hydrocarbon-Degrading Microbial Communities in Bioelectrochemical Systems

Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Espinoza-Tofalos ◽  
Matteo Daghio ◽  
Enza Palma ◽  
Federico Aulenta ◽  
Andrea Franzetti

Bioelectrochemical systems (BESs) exploit the interaction between microbes and electrodes. A field of application thereof is bioelectrochemical remediation, an effective strategy in environments where the absence of suitable electron acceptors limits classic bioremediation approaches. Understanding the microbial community structure and genetic potential of anode biofilms is of great interest to interpret the mechanisms occurring in BESs. In this study, by using a whole metagenome sequencing approach, taxonomic and functional diversity patterns in the inoculum and on the anodes of three continuous-flow BES for the removal of phenol, toluene, and BTEX were obtained. The genus Geobacter was highly enriched on the anodes and two reconstructed genomes were taxonomically related to the Geobacteraceae family. To functionally characterize the microbial community, the genes coding for the anaerobic degradation of toluene, ethylbenzene, and phenol were selected as genetic markers for the anaerobic degradation of the pollutants. The genes related with direct extracellular electron transfer (EET) were also analyzed. The inoculum carried the genetic baggage for the degradation of aromatics but lacked the capacity of EET while anodic bacterial communities were able to pursue both processes. The metagenomic approach provided useful insights into the ecology and complex functions within hydrocarbon-degrading electrogenic biofilms.

Microbiome ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lars Snipen ◽  
Inga-Leena Angell ◽  
Torbjørn Rognes ◽  
Knut Rudi

Abstract Background Studies of shifts in microbial community composition has many applications. For studies at species or subspecies levels, the 16S amplicon sequencing lacks resolution and is often replaced by full shotgun sequencing. Due to higher costs, this restricts the number of samples sequenced. As an alternative to a full shotgun sequencing we have investigated the use of Reduced Metagenome Sequencing (RMS) to estimate the composition of a microbial community. This involves the use of double-digested restriction-associated DNA sequencing, which means only a smaller fraction of the genomes are sequenced. The read sets obtained by this approach have properties different from both amplicon and shotgun data, and analysis pipelines for both can either not be used at all or not explore the full potential of RMS data. Results We suggest a procedure for analyzing such data, based on fragment clustering and the use of a constrained ordinary least square de-convolution for estimating the relative abundance of all community members. Mock community datasets show the potential to clearly separate strains even when the 16S is 100% identical, and genome-wide differences is < 0.02, indicating RMS has a very high resolution. From a simulation study, we compare RMS to shotgun sequencing and show that we get improved abundance estimates when the community has many very closely related genomes. From a real dataset of infant guts, we show that RMS is capable of detecting a strain diversity gradient for Escherichia coli across time. Conclusion We find that RMS is a good alternative to either metabarcoding or shotgun sequencing when it comes to resolving microbial communities at the strain level. Like shotgun metagenomics, it requires a good database of reference genomes and is well suited for studies of the human gut or other communities where many reference genomes exist. A data analysis pipeline is offered, as an R package at https://github.com/larssnip/microRMS.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yingdan Yuan ◽  
Mengting Zu ◽  
Lei Liu ◽  
Xiaomei Song

Abstract Background: Dendrobium is a precious herbal belongs to Orchid and widely used as health care traditional Chinese medicine in Asia. Although orchids are mycorrhizal plants, most researches still focus on endophytes, and there is still large unknown in rhizosphere microorganisms. In order to investigate the rhizosphere microbial community of different Dendrobium species during the maturity stage, we used high-throughput sequencing to analyze microbial community in rhizosphere soil during maturity stage of three kinds of Dendrobium species.Results: In our study, a total of 240,320 sequences and 11,179 OTUs were obtained from these three Dendrobium species. According to the analysis of OTU annotation results, different Dendrobium rhizosphere soil bacteria include 2 kingdoms, 63 phyla, 72 classes, 159 orders, 309 families, 850 genera and 663 species. Among all sequences, the dominant bacterial phyla (relative abundance > 1%) were Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Acidobacteria, Firmicutes, Verrucomicrobia, Planctomycetes, Chloroflexi, Gemmatimonadetes. We analyzed the environmental factors of the growth of Dendrobium and found that the environmental factor that affects the rhizosphere soil microorganisms of Dendrobium is the soil factor. Among them, soil factors most closely related to the influence of Dendrobium rhizosphere soil microorganisms include total nitrogen, available phosphorus, ammonium nitrogen and pH value.Conclusions: We found that the rhizosphere bacterial communities of the three kinds of Dendrobium have significant differences, and the main species of rhizosphere microorganisms of Dendrobium are concentrated in the Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes. Moreover, the smaller the level of bacterial, the greater the difference among Dendrobium species. Soil is the most important environmental factor affecting the bacterial communities in the rhizosphere soil of Dendrobium. These results fill the gap in the rhizosphere microbial community of Dendrobium and provide a theoretical basis for the subsequent mining of microbial functions and the study of biological fertilizers.


2018 ◽  
Vol 432 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 359-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Checinska Sielaff ◽  
Racheal N. Upton ◽  
Kirsten S. Hofmockel ◽  
Xia Xu ◽  
H. Wayne Polley ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 86 (19) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bridget E. Conley ◽  
Matthew T. Weinstock ◽  
Daniel R. Bond ◽  
Jeffrey A. Gralnick

ABSTRACT Vibrio natriegens is the fastest-growing microorganism discovered to date, making it a useful model for biotechnology and basic research. While it is recognized for its rapid aerobic metabolism, less is known about anaerobic adaptations in V. natriegens or how the organism survives when oxygen is limited. Here, we describe and characterize extracellular electron transfer (EET) in V. natriegens, a metabolism that requires movement of electrons across protective cellular barriers to reach the extracellular space. V. natriegens performs extracellular electron transfer under fermentative conditions with gluconate, glucosamine, and pyruvate. We characterized a pathway in V. natriegens that requires CymA, PdsA, and MtrCAB for Fe(III) citrate and Fe(III) oxide reduction, which represents a hybrid of strategies previously discovered in Shewanella and Aeromonas. Expression of these V. natriegens genes functionally complemented Shewanella oneidensis mutants. Phylogenetic analysis of the inner membrane quinol dehydrogenases CymA and NapC in gammaproteobacteria suggests that CymA from Shewanella diverged from Vibrionaceae CymA and NapC. Analysis of sequenced Vibrionaceae revealed that the genetic potential to perform EET is conserved in some members of the Harveyi and Vulnificus clades but is more variable in other clades. We provide evidence that EET enhances anaerobic survival of V. natriegens, which may be the primary physiological function for EET in Vibrionaceae. IMPORTANCE Bacteria from the genus Vibrio occupy a variety of marine and brackish niches with fluctuating nutrient and energy sources. When oxygen is limited, fermentation or alternative respiration pathways must be used to conserve energy. In sedimentary environments, insoluble oxide minerals (primarily iron and manganese) are able to serve as electron acceptors for anaerobic respiration by microorganisms capable of extracellular electron transfer, a metabolism that enables the use of these insoluble substrates. Here, we identify the mechanism for extracellular electron transfer in Vibrio natriegens, which uses a combination of strategies previously identified in Shewanella and Aeromonas. We show that extracellular electron transfer enhanced survival of V. natriegens under fermentative conditions, which may be a generalized strategy among Vibrio spp. predicted to have this metabolism.


Author(s):  
Roushney Fatima Mukti ◽  
Sanjida Sakhawat Sinthee

The complexity of the microbial communities and metabolic pathways involved in the microbiological process of biogas production is poorly understood and numerous microorganisms in the fermentation sample of the biogas plant are still unclassified or unknown. The structure and function of microbial communities and the effects of the addition of trace elements are needed to be known, to control and channel the energy sources microbes produce and to capture and store the useful by-products or for targeted screening of novel enzymes. In this review, we discussed an emerging idea that Metagenome sequence data from a biogas-producing microbial community residing in a fermenter of a biogas plant provide the basis for a rational approach to improve the biotechnological process of biogas production. The composition and gene content of a biogas-producing consortium can be determined through metagenomic approach which allows the design of the optimal microbial community structure for any biogas plant for the significant progress in the efficacy and economic improvement of biogas production and biofertilizer of either balanced nutrition or rich in specific element for plant growth produced from the sludge of biogas plant. Biogas-producing microbial community from different production-scale biogas plants supplied with different raw materials as substrates can be analyzed by polyphasic approach to find out the best raw material composition for biogas production. The phylogenetic structure of the microbial community residing in a fermentation sample from a biogas plant can be analysed by an integrated approach using clone library sequences and metagenome sequence data obtained by 454-pyrosequencing. Int. J. Appl. Sci. Biotechnol. Vol 7(1): 6-11


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (11) ◽  
pp. 1841
Author(s):  
Stéphane Pinck ◽  
Lucila Martínez Ostormujof ◽  
Sébastien Teychené ◽  
Benjamin Erable

It is the ambition of many researchers to finally be able to close in on the fundamental, coupled phenomena that occur during the formation and expression of electrocatalytic activity in electroactive biofilms. It is because of this desire to understand that bioelectrochemical systems (BESs) have been miniaturized into microBES by taking advantage of the worldwide development of microfluidics. Microfluidics tools applied to bioelectrochemistry permit even more fundamental studies of interactions and coupled phenomena occurring at the microscale, thanks, in particular, to the concomitant combination of electroanalysis, spectroscopic analytical techniques and real-time microscopy that is now possible. The analytical microsystem is therefore much better suited to the monitoring, not only of electroactive biofilm formation but also of the expression and disentangling of extracellular electron transfer (EET) catalytic mechanisms. This article reviews the details of the configurations of microfluidic BESs designed for selected objectives and their microfabrication techniques. Because the aim is to manipulate microvolumes and due to the high modularity of the experimental systems, the interfacial conditions between electrodes and electrolytes are perfectly controlled in terms of physicochemistry (pH, nutrients, chemical effectors, etc.) and hydrodynamics (shear, material transport, etc.). Most of the theoretical advances have been obtained thanks to work carried out using models of electroactive bacteria monocultures, mainly to simplify biological investigation systems. However, a huge virgin field of investigation still remains to be explored by taking advantage of the capacities of microfluidic BESs regarding the complexity and interactions of mixed electroactive biofilms.


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