Assessment of the microbial interplay during anaerobic co-digestion of wastewater sludge using common components analysis

PLoS One. 2020 May 1;15(5):e0232324. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0232324. eCollection 2020.

Abstract

Anaerobic digestion (AD) is used to minimize solid waste while producing biogas by the action of microorganisms. To give an insight into the underlying microbial dynamics in anaerobic digesters, we investigated two different AD systems (wastewater sludge mixed with either fish or grass waste). The microbial activity was characterized by 16S RNA sequencing. 16S data is sparse and dispersed, and existent data analysis methods do not take into account this complexity nor the potential microbial interactions. In this line, we proposed a data pre-processing pipeline addressing these issues while not restricting only to the most abundant microorganisms. The data were analyzed by Common Components Analysis (CCA) to decipher the effect of substrate composition on the microorganisms. CCA results hinted the relationships between the microorganisms responding similarly to the AD physicochemical parameters. Thus, in overall, CCA allowed a better understanding of the inter-species interactions within microbial communities.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Anaerobiosis
  • Archaea / isolation & purification
  • Archaea / metabolism*
  • Bacteria / isolation & purification
  • Bacteria / metabolism*
  • Biodiversity
  • Data Analysis
  • Fisheries
  • Microbial Interactions
  • RNA, Bacterial
  • RNA, Ribosomal, 16S
  • Sewage / microbiology*
  • Statistics as Topic

Substances

  • RNA, Bacterial
  • RNA, Ribosomal, 16S
  • Sewage

Grants and funding

LM is holder of a grant from the National Research Agency (https://anr.fr/) with grant number ANR-16-CE05-0014. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.