Responses of microbial interactions and functional genes to sulfamethoxazole in anammox consortia

Meina Hu; Xiaojing Liu; Shidi Liu; Tao Ya; Minglu Zhang; Tingting Zhang; Xiaoping Gao; Xiaohui Wang

doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2023.119408

Responses of microbial interactions and functional genes to sulfamethoxazole in anammox consortia

J Environ Manage. 2023 Dec 15:348:119408. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2023.119408. Epub 2023 Oct 23.

Authors

Meina Hu¹, Xiaojing Liu¹, Shidi Liu², Tao Ya¹, Minglu Zhang³, Tingting Zhang¹, Xiaoping Gao⁴, Xiaohui Wang⁵

Affiliations

¹ Beijing Engineering Research Center of Environmental Material for Water Purification, College of Chemical Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing, 100029, China.
² Beijing Engineering Research Center of Environmental Material for Water Purification, College of Chemical Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing, 100029, China; Fuzhou Planning Design Research Institute, Fuzhou, 350108, China.
³ Key Laboratory of Cleaner Production and Integrated Resource Utilization of China National Light Industry, Beijing Technology and Business University, Beijing, 100048, China.
⁴ Fuzhou Planning Design Research Institute, Fuzhou, 350108, China. Electronic address: 13805066094@139.com.
⁵ Beijing Engineering Research Center of Environmental Material for Water Purification, College of Chemical Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing, 100029, China. Electronic address: xhwang@mail.buct.edu.cn.

PMID: 37879180
DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2023.119408

Abstract

Sulfamethoxazole (SMX) has been widely detected in various environments and its potential environmental risks have caused great concerns. However, the impact mechanism of SMX on microbial interactions among anammox consortia remain unknown. A long-term exposure experiments (140 d) was carried out to systematically examine the influence of SMX (0-1000 μg/L) on the anammox system, especially microbial network dynamics and variations of key metabolic genes. Results showed that anammox system could adapt to SMX below 500 μg/L and maintain a high nitrogen removal efficiency (NRE) of 85.35 ± 2.42%, while 1000 μg/L SMX significantly decreased the abundance of functional microbes and deteriorated denitrification performance with NRE dropped to 36.92 ± 15.01%. Co-occurrence network analysis indicated that 1000 μg/L SMX decreased the interactions between Proteobacteria and Chloroflexi and limited AnAOB from playing an important role as central nodes in the subnetwork of Planctomycetes. Metagenomics analysis found that genes associated with nitrogen removal (i.e., hdh, hzs, nirS, and hao) showed lower expression level after addition of SMX, while SMX-related ARGs (sul1 and sul2) increased by 1.22 and 2.68 times. This study provided us a relatively comprehensive perspective in response of microbial interactions and metabolic activity to various SMX concentrations.

Keywords: Anammox consortia; Functional gene; Microbial interactions; Sulfamethoxazole.

MeSH terms

Anaerobic Ammonia Oxidation*
Microbial Interactions
Nitrogen
Sulfamethoxazole* / pharmacology

Substances

Sulfamethoxazole
Nitrogen