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Response of denitrifying genes coding for nitrite (nirK or nirS) and nitrous oxide (nosZ) reductases to different physico-chemical parameters during agricultural waste composting

  • Environmental biotechnology
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Abstract

The present research was performed to clarify the changes of denitrifying genes (nirK, nirS, and nosZ) abundances under different physico-chemical parameters through evaluating the relationships between the genes abundances and parameters during agricultural waste composting. The genes abundances were determined by real-time quantitative PCR (qPCR). The correlations between physico-chemical parameters and denitrifying genes abundances were analysed by regression analysis. qPCR results showed that the nosZ gene abundance was higher than that of nirK and nirS genes. The nirK gene abundance was higher than nirS gene indicating that nitrite reducers with Cu-containing enzyme encoded by nirK gene were more of importance than those with cytochrome cd1 nitrite reductase encoded by nirS gene in the nitrite reduction step. Regression analysis suggested that (1) nirK gene abundance was correlated with pile temperature following quadratic model; (2) nirS gene abundance was linearly correlated with pile temperature and concentration of NH4 +, while correlated with concentration of NO3 − and pH following inverse and quadratic model respectively; (3) nosZ gene abundance was quadratically correlated with pH and linearly correlated with water soluble carbon (WSC).

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Acknowledgments

This study was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51039001, 51378190, 51408219, 21407046, 51108423), the Hunan Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (10JJ7005), the Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (Y5100234).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha, 410082, China

    Lihua Zhang, Guangming Zeng, Jiachao Zhang, Yaoning Chen, Lunhui Lu, Yuan Zhu, Yujie Yuan, Aizhi Huang & Ling He

  2. Key Laboratory of Environmental Biology and Pollution Control (Hunan University), Ministry of Education, Changsha, 410082, China

    Lihua Zhang, Guangming Zeng, Yaoning Chen, Lunhui Lu, Yuan Zhu, Yujie Yuan, Aizhi Huang & Ling He

  3. College of Resources and Environment, Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha, 410128, China

    Jiachao Zhang

  4. Environmental Resources and Soil Fertilizer Institute, Zhejiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Hangzhou, 310021, China

    Man Yu

  5. Hunan Academy of Forestry and Biodiesel Engineering Research Centre of Hunan Province, Changsha, 410004, China

    Hui Li

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  1. Lihua Zhang
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  2. Guangming Zeng
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Correspondence to Guangming Zeng or Jiachao Zhang.

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Zhang, L., Zeng, G., Zhang, J. et al. Response of denitrifying genes coding for nitrite (nirK or nirS) and nitrous oxide (nosZ) reductases to different physico-chemical parameters during agricultural waste composting. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 99, 4059–4070 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-014-6293-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-014-6293-3

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