TY - JOUR
T1 - Global diversity and biogeography of bacterial communities in wastewater treatment plants
AU - Global Water Microbiome Consortium
AU - Wu, Linwei
AU - Ning, Daliang
AU - Zhang, Bing
AU - Li, Yong
AU - Zhang, Ping
AU - Shan, Xiaoyu
AU - Zhang, Qiuting
AU - Brown, Mathew
AU - Li, Zhenxin
AU - Van Nostrand, Joy D.
AU - Ling, Fangqiong
AU - Xiao, Naijia
AU - Zhang, Ya
AU - Vierheilig, Julia
AU - Wells, George F.
AU - Yang, Yunfeng
AU - Deng, Ye
AU - Tu, Qichao
AU - Wang, Aijie
AU - Zhang, Tong
AU - He, Zhili
AU - Keller, Jurg
AU - Nielsen, Per H.
AU - Alvarez, Pedro J.J.
AU - Criddle, Craig S.
AU - Wagner, Michael
AU - Tiedje, James M.
AU - He, Qiang
AU - Curtis, Thomas P.
AU - Stahl, David A.
AU - Alvarez-Cohen, Lisa
AU - Rittmann, Bruce E.
AU - Wen, Xianghua
AU - Zhou, Jizhong
AU - Acevedo, Dany
AU - Agullo-Barcelo, Miriam
AU - Andersen, Gary L.
AU - de Araujo, Juliana Calabria
AU - Boehnke, Kevin
AU - Bond, Philip
AU - Bott, Charles B.
AU - Bovio, Patricia
AU - Brewster, Rebecca K.
AU - Bux, Faizal
AU - Cabezas, Angela
AU - Cabrol, Léa
AU - Chen, Si
AU - Etchebehere, Claudia
AU - Ford, Amanda
AU - Oehmen, Adrian
N1 - The authors thank T. Allen, A. Al-Omari, R. Bart, D. Crowley, G. Harwood, T. Hensley, S.-J. Huitric, M. M. L. Martins, A. Mena, B. Pathak, S. Pereira, D. E. Sauble, M. Taylor, P. Truong, D. VanderSchuur, A. Vieira and D. Zambrano for helping with sampling and metadata collection. This work was supported by the Tsinghua University Initiative Scientific Research Program (No. 20161080112), the National Scientific Foundation in China (51678335), the State Key Joint Laboratory of Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control (18L02ESPC) in China, and the Office of the Vice President for Research at the University of Oklahoma. Lin. W. and B.Z. were generously supported by the China Scholarship Council(CSC).J.Z.([email protected]) and DN.([email protected]) serve as GWMC contacts.
PY - 2019/7/1
Y1 - 2019/7/1
N2 - Microorganisms in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are essential for water purification to protect public and environmental health. However, the diversity of microorganisms and the factors that control it are poorly understood. Using a systematic global-sampling effort, we analysed the 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequences from ~1,200 activated sludge samples taken from 269 WWTPs in 23 countries on 6 continents. Our analyses revealed that the global activated sludge bacterial communities contain ~1 billion bacterial phylotypes with a Poisson lognormal diversity distribution. Despite this high diversity, activated sludge has a small, global core bacterial community (n = 28 operational taxonomic units) that is strongly linked to activated sludge performance. Meta-analyses with global datasets associate the activated sludge microbiomes most closely to freshwater populations. In contrast to macroorganism diversity, activated sludge bacterial communities show no latitudinal gradient. Furthermore, their spatial turnover is scale-dependent and appears to be largely driven by stochastic processes (dispersal and drift), although deterministic factors (temperature and organic input) are also important. Our findings enhance our mechanistic understanding of the global diversity and biogeography of activated sludge bacterial communities within a theoretical ecology framework and have important implications for microbial ecology and wastewater treatment processes.
AB - Microorganisms in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are essential for water purification to protect public and environmental health. However, the diversity of microorganisms and the factors that control it are poorly understood. Using a systematic global-sampling effort, we analysed the 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequences from ~1,200 activated sludge samples taken from 269 WWTPs in 23 countries on 6 continents. Our analyses revealed that the global activated sludge bacterial communities contain ~1 billion bacterial phylotypes with a Poisson lognormal diversity distribution. Despite this high diversity, activated sludge has a small, global core bacterial community (n = 28 operational taxonomic units) that is strongly linked to activated sludge performance. Meta-analyses with global datasets associate the activated sludge microbiomes most closely to freshwater populations. In contrast to macroorganism diversity, activated sludge bacterial communities show no latitudinal gradient. Furthermore, their spatial turnover is scale-dependent and appears to be largely driven by stochastic processes (dispersal and drift), although deterministic factors (temperature and organic input) are also important. Our findings enhance our mechanistic understanding of the global diversity and biogeography of activated sludge bacterial communities within a theoretical ecology framework and have important implications for microbial ecology and wastewater treatment processes.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85065757739&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41564-019-0426-5
DO - 10.1038/s41564-019-0426-5
M3 - Article
C2 - 31086312
AN - SCOPUS:85065757739
SN - 2058-5276
VL - 4
SP - 1183
EP - 1195
JO - Nature Microbiology
JF - Nature Microbiology
IS - 7
ER -