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Tools for Metagenomic Analysis at Wastewater Treatment Plants:
Application to a Foaming Episode
Author(s) -
Rosso Gretchen E.,
Muday Jeffrey A.,
Curran James F.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
water environment research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.356
H-Index - 73
eISSN - 1554-7531
pISSN - 1061-4303
DOI - 10.2175/106143017x15054988926352
Subject(s) - metagenomics , activated sludge , wastewater , sewage treatment , biology , aeration , population , microbiology and biotechnology , pulp and paper industry , environmental science , ecology , environmental engineering , gene , engineering , genetics , demography , sociology
Metagenomic analysis is a powerful approach for wholesale characterizations of microbial populations like those that operate within municipal wastewater treatment plants. It is well known that many problems are associated with the overgrowth or undergrowth of specific bacterial genera. We describe a database of the combined metagenomes of activated sludge aeration basins from around the globe and use it as a reference to study the population of a foamy activated sludge aeration basin. We show that foam production is associated with blooms of mycolic acid producing genera, especially Mycobacterium . We confirm this bloom using the acid‐fast stain, and we show that genes involved with mycolic acid production are enriched in the foam‐producing sample. In addition, we show that this sample has unusual nitrifying populations. We suggest that low‐cost DNA sequencing and publicly available tools for shotgun metagenomic analyses, including those described here, might broadly facilitate wastewater treatment plant operation.