Bacterial community compositions and nitrogen metabolism function in a cattle farm wastewater treatment plant revealed by Illumina high-throughput sequencing

Bacteria play an important role in pollutant transformation in activated sludge-based wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). Exploring the microbial community structure and diversity is essential to improving the performance of wastewater treatment processes. This study employed Illumina MiSeq high-throughput sequencing to investigate the microbial community composition and diversity in a cattle farm wastewater treatment plant (Cf-WWTP). The results showed that the dominant phyla in the whole process were Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, and Firmicutes. The principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) indicated that the different stages had a significant impact on the microbial community structure; Bacteroidetes was the dominant phylum in the anearobic stage and Proteobacteria was the dominant phylum in the anoxic-oxic stage. Redundancy analysis (RDA) revealed that total phosphorus (TP) was the most significant factor that regulated the microbial community composition, followed by chemical oxygen demand (COD), total nitrogen (TN), and pH. Proteobacteria, Patescibacteria, and Chloroflexi were simultaneously negatively correlated with TN, COD, and TP. Nitrogen metabolic pathway and transformation mechanism was elucidated by a complete denitrification function predicted with phylogenetic investigation of communities with reconstruction of unobserved states (PICRUSt), as well as detection of ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) and nitrite-oxidizing bacteria (NOB). These results provide new insights into our understanding of microbial community and metabolic functions of Cf-WWTP.

Automated summary

This study used high-throughput sequencing technology to investigate the microbial community structure and diversity in a cattle farm wastewater treatment plant, revealing significant impacts of different stages on microbial community structure. The results also showed that total phosphorus is the most important factor regulating microbial community composition, and nitrogen metabolic pathway and transformation mechanism were elucidated.