Abstract
The microflora of a self-heating aerobic thermophilic sequencing batch reactor (AT-SBR) treating swine waste was investigated by a combination of culture and culture-independent techniques. The temperature increased quickly in the first hours of the treatment cycles and values up to 72°C were reached. Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis of the PCR-amplified V3 region of 16S rDNA (PCR-DGGE) revealed important changes in the bacterial community during 3-day cycles. A clone library was constructed with the near-full-length 16S rDNA amplified from a mixed-liquor sample taken at 60°C. Among the 78 non-chimeric clones analysed, 20 species (here defined as clones showing more than 97% sequence homology) were found. In contrast to other culture-independent bacterial analyses of aerobic thermophilic wastewater treatments, species belonging to the Bacilli class were dominant (64%) with Bacillus thermocloacae being the most abundant species (38%). The other Bacilli could not be assigned to a known species. Schineria larvae was the second most abundant species (14%) in the clone library. Four species were also found among the 19 strains isolated, cultivated and identified from samples taken at 40°C and 60°C. Ten isolates showed high 16S rDNA sequence homology with the dominant bacterium of a composting process that had not been previously isolated.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Fonds pour la Formation de Chercheurs et l’Aide à la Recherche (FCAR) and by the Institut de Recherche et Développement en Agroenvironnement (IRDA) via a grant (2000-IR-70894) under the “Action Concertée FCAR-IRDA” program. We thank Louis Racine for providing outstanding technical assistance. We also thank Guy McSween and Dr. François Shareck (INRS - Institut Armand-Frappier) for having kindly provided some of the strains used as markers in DGGE analyses.
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An erratum to this article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00253-005-1925-2
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Juteau, P., Tremblay, D., Villemur, R. et al. Analysis of the bacterial community inhabiting an aerobic thermophilic sequencing batch reactor (AT-SBR) treating swine waste. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 66, 115–122 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-004-1692-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-004-1692-5