Evaluating Quantitative PCR Assays to Enumerate Several Bacterial Populations of Importance in Different Municipal Wastewater Treatment Designs
Publication: Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 147, Issue 10
Abstract
This study evaluated the efficacy of quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) to monitor several pertinent bacterial populations in 25 different full-scale wastewater treatment bioreactors across 9 different system designs. All the bioreactors contained a substantial quantity of total bacterial biomass and denitrifying bacteria, independent of system design. In contrast, the quantities of ammonia oxidizing bacteria (AOB) and phosphate accumulating organisms (PAOs) measured by qPCR targeting the amoA gene and the 16S rRNA genes, respectively, from the Candidatus Accumulibacter lineage significantly correlated with system design. Bioreactors with short mean cell residence time () had significantly lower AOB abundance than most of the other bioreactors (all pairwise comparisons , except for a membrane-coupled bioreactor). Similarly, bioreactors designed for enhanced biological phosphorus removal had significantly higher relative quantities of PAOs than did conventional systems (). In conclusion, these qPCR assays should be practically useful for monitoring full-scale wastewater treatment bioreactors, thereby helping to improve process performance.
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Data Availability Statement
All qPCR data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
Financial support was provided by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund. We thank the operators at the treatment facilities for collecting samples, and Elizabeth Hill for technical assistance.
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Published In
Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 147 • Issue 10 • October 2021
Copyright
© 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jan 6, 2021
Accepted: Jun 9, 2021
Published online: Aug 12, 2021
Published in print: Oct 1, 2021
Discussion open until: Jan 12, 2022
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