Background: Anaerobic digestion (AD) is a microbe-driven process of biomass decomposition to CH4 and CO2. In addition to renewable and cost-effective energy production, AD has emerged in the European Union as an environmentally friendly model of bio-waste valorisation and nutrient recycling. Nevertheless, due to the high diversity of uncharacterised microbes, a typical AD microbiome is still considered as "dark matter".
Results: Using the high-throughput sequencing of small rRNA gene, and a monthly monitoring of the physicochemical parameters for 20 different mesophilic full-scale bioreactors over 1 year, we generated a detailed view of AD microbial ecology towards a better understanding of factors that influence and shape these communities. By studying the broadly distributed OTUs present in over 80% of analysed samples, we identified putatively important core bacteria and archaea to the AD process that accounted for over 70% of the whole microbial community relative abundances. AD reactors localised at the wastewater treatment plants were shown to operate with distinct core microbiomes than the agricultural and bio-waste treating biogas units. We also showed that both the core microbiomes were composed of low (with average community abundance ≤ 1%) and highly abundant microbial populations; the vast majority of which remains yet uncharacterised, e.g. abundant candidate Cloacimonetes. Using non-metric multidimensional scaling, we observed microorganisms grouping into clusters that well reflected the origin of the samples, e.g. wastewater versus agricultural and bio-waste treating biogas units. The calculated diversity patterns differed markedly between the different community clusters, mainly due to the presence of highly diverse and dynamic transient species. Core microbial communities appeared relatively stable over the monitoring period.
Conclusions: In this study, we characterised microbial communities in different AD systems that were monitored over a 1-year period. Evidences were shown to support the concept of a core community driving the AD process, whereas the vast majority of dominant microorganisms remain yet to be characterised.
Keywords: Biogas; Microbial communities; Small rRNA gene amplicon high-throughput sequencing.