Abstract
A gel-forming exopolysaccharide was previously shown to play an important structural role in aerobic granules treating nutrient-rich industrial wastewater. To identify whether this exopolysaccharide performs a similar role in other granular biomass and if conditions favouring its production can be more precisely elucidated, extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) were extracted from granules grown under four different operating conditions. 1H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy of their EPS indicated that the gel-forming exopolysaccharide was expressed in two granular sludges both enriched in Candidatus “Competibacter phosphatis”. In contrast, it was not expressed in granules performing denitrification with methanol as a carbon source and nitrate as the electron acceptor or granules enriched in Candidatus “Accumulibacter phosphatis” performing enhanced biological phosphorus removal from synthetic wastewater. In one of the first two sludges, the exopolysaccharide contained in the seeding granular sludge continued to be a major component of the granule EPS while Competibacter was being enriched. In the second sludge, a floccular sludge not containing the gel-forming exopolysaccharide initially was also enriched for Competibacter. In this sludge, an increase in particle size was detected coinciding with a yield increase of EPS. NMR spectroscopy confirmed its yield increase to be attributable to the production of this structural gel-forming exopolysaccharide. The results show that (1) the particular gel-forming exopolysaccharide previously identified is not necessarily a key structural exopolysaccharide for all granule types, and (2) synthesis of this exopolysaccharide is induced under conditions favouring the selective enrichment of Competibacter. This indicates that Competibacter may be involved in its production.
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Acknowledgements
This work was funded by the Environmental Biotechnology Cooperative Research Centre (EBCRC) Pty Ltd, Australia. TS is an Australian postgraduate awardee and an EBCRC scholarship recipient. MP is a research fellow from the Ramon y Cajal program. The authors would like to thank Jeremy Barr and Yuting Pan for operating the reactors achieving phosphorous removal from synthetic wastewater and denitrification using methanol, respectively and for providing the reactor performance data. We would also like to acknowledge Jitesh Raniga and Stephen Andersen for their valuable assistance in operation and analysis of Competibacter enrichment in reactors 3 and 4, as well as the assistance of Dr. Frances Slater in the imaging of FISH-probed samples.
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Seviour, T.W., Lambert, L.K., Pijuan, M. et al. Selectively inducing the synthesis of a key structural exopolysaccharide in aerobic granules by enriching for Candidatus “Competibacter phosphatis”. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 92, 1297–1305 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-011-3385-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-011-3385-1