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Microbial community structure in a thermophilic anaerobic hybrid reactor degrading terephthalate

¹ Department of Civil Engineering, National University of Singapore, Blk E1A, #07-03, Engineering Drive 2, Singapore 117576
² Laboratoire de Microbiologie, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD-ex ORSTOM), Universités de Provence et de la Méditerranée, ESIL case 925, 163 Avenue de Luminy, 13288 Marseille cedex 09, France
³ Departamento de Biotecnología, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Iztapalapa, Av. San Rafael Atlixco 186, Col. Vicentina, 09340 Iztapalapa, DF, Mexico

Correspondence
Wen-Tso Liu
cveliuwt{at}nus.edu.sg

A thermophilic terephthalate-degrading methanogenic consortium was successfully enriched for 272 days in an anaerobic hybrid reactor, and the microbial structure was characterized using terminal RFLPs, clone libraries and fluorescence in-situ hybridization with rRNA-targeted oligonucleotide probes. All the results suggested that Methanothrix thermophila-related methanogens, Desulfotomaculum-related bacterial populations in the Gram-positive low-G+C group, and OP5-related populations were the key members responsible for terephthalate degradation under thermophilic methanogenic conditions except during periods when the reactor experienced heat shock and pump failure. These perturbations caused a significant shift in bacterial population structure in sludge samples taken from the sludge bed but not from the surface of the packing materials. After system recovery, many other bacterial populations emerged, which belonged mainly to the Gram-positive low-G+C group and Cytophaga–Flexibacter–Bacteroides, as well as -Proteobacteria, Planctomycetes and Nitrospira. These newly emerged populations were probably also capable of degrading terephthalate in the hybrid system, but were out-competed by those bacterial populations before perturbations.

The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession numbers for the 16S rRNA gene sequences reported in this paper are AY297961–AY297969, AY297971–AY297978, AY297980–AY297982, AY297985, AY297987–AY297992 and AY661403–AY661422.

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