Impacts of food waste to sludge ratios on microbial dynamics and functional traits in thermophilic digesters

A self-stabilizing microbial community lays the foundation of the efficient biochemical reactions of the anaerobic digestion (AD) process. Despite extensive profiling of microbial community dynamics under varying operating parameters, the effects of food waste (FW) to feeding sewage sludge (FSS) ratios on the microbial assembly, functional traits, and syntrophic interspecies interactions in thermophilic microbial consortia remain poorly understood. Here, we investigated the long-term impacts of the FW: FSS ratio on the thermophilic AD microbiome using genome-centric metagenomics. Both the short reads (SRs) assembly, and the iterative hybrid assembly (IHA) of SRs and nanopore long reads (LRs) were used to reconstruct metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) and four microbial clusters were identified, demonstrating different microbial dynamics patterns in response to varying FW:FSS ratios. Cluster C1-C3 were comprised of full functional members with genetic potentials in fulfilling empirical AD biochemical reactions, wherein, syntrophic decarboxylating acetogens could interact with methanogens, and some microbes could be energized by the electron bifurcation mechanism to drive thermodynamics unfavorable reactions. We found the co-existence of both acetogenic and hydrogenotrophic methanogens in the AD microbiome, and they altered their trophic groups to scavenge the methanogenic substrates in ensuring the methane generation in digesters with different FW:FSS ratios. Another interesting observation was that two phylogenetically close Thermotogota species showed a possible strong competition on carbon source inferred by the nearly complete genetic overlap of their relevant pathways.

Automated summary

This study investigated the long-term impacts of food waste to feeding sewage sludge ratios on the thermophilic anaerobic digestion microbiome. The results showed different microbial dynamics patterns in response to varying ratios, and identified microbial clusters with different functional traits and syntrophic interspecies interactions.