Analysis of Microbial Community Using Massive Sequencing in Methanogenic Reactors

Abstract

Although anaerobic digestion systems are very useful to both waste treatment and energy production, the correlation between microbial community and physiological profile is not fully understood and needs to be investigated. A few studies show correlation of methane and hydrogen-producing bacteria with volatile solid (VS) concentration in reactors. Methanosaeta species were dominant at initial but Methanosarcina species were abundant as accumulated VS concentration.The increase of VS concentration led to hydrogen production by Thermotogales strain and Bacilus species in mesophilic reactor. Here, we show the relationship of microbial community with chemical factors in ADS, especially methoanogenic reactor. Microbial community was quantitatively analyzed by pyrosequencing. Recently, the pyrosequencing technology was used widely in the field of microbial ecology. The pyrosequencing can be used to sequence massive molecules of DNA simultaneously using a sequencing by synthesis. Currently this technology can generate up to 1,200,000 reads in single run and the average of the sequence reads was 400 bp. In this study, we investigated the correlation between microbial communities in methanogenic bioreactor of ADS and physiological profile. Both bacterial and methanogenic community were analyzed using pyrosequencing and following bioinformatics analysis.