Abstract
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) have received increasing attention due to their widespread presence in diverse environments including wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and their potential adverse health effects. Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) is one of the most detected forms of PFASs in WWTPs. However, there is still a paucity of knowledge about the effect of PFASs on microorganisms of the key component of WWTP, activated sludge. In this study, lab-scale microcosm experiments were established to evaluate the influences of PFOA on activated sludge microbes under aerobic and anaerobic conditions. The diversity, structure, and microbe-microbe interaction of microbial community were determined by 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing and co-occurrence network analysis. After 90 days of exposure to PFOA, activated sludge microbial richness decreased under both aerobic and anaerobic conditions. Specifically, under aerobic condition, Rhodopseudomonas (mean relative abundance 3.6%), Flavobacterium (2.4%), and Ignavibacterium (6.6%) were enriched in PFOA-spiked activated sludge compared with that in the unspiked sludge (2.6%, 0.1%, and 1.9%, respectively). By contrast, after 90 days of exposure to PFOA, Eubacterium (2.1%), Hyphomicrobium (1.8%), and Methyloversatilis (1.2%) were enriched under anaerobic condition, and more abundant than that in the control sludge (0.4%, 1.5%, and 0.6%, respectively). These genera were the potential PFOA-resistant members. In addition, Azospirillum and Sporomusa were the most connected taxa in PFOA-aerobic and PFOA-anaerobic networks, respectively. Prediction of the functional gene showed that PFOA inhibited some gene expression of sludge microbes, such as transcription, amino acid transport and metabolism, and energy production and conversion. In summary, continued exposure to PFOA induced substantial shifts of the sludge bacterial diversity and composition under both aerobic and anaerobic conditions.
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Data availability
The nucleic acid reads of 16S rRNA genes in the current study are available in the NCBI database with the project number PRJNA755805.
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Funding
This work was supported by the Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangzhou (grant no. 202002020072), GDAS’ Project of Science and Technology Development (grant nos. 2020GDASYL-20200102015, 2020GDASYL-20200102018, 2020GDASYL-20200102014, 2022GDASZH-2022010106, and 2021GDASYL-20210302003), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 42007357, 52170035, and U20A20109), and Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (grant no. 2021A1515011374).
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Duanyi Huang wrote the original draft, and Zhaohui Yang, Hanzhi Lin, and Weimin Sun contributed to the conception of the study. Rui Xu, Xiaoxu Sun, Yongbin Li, and Duanyi Huang performed the experiment and data analysis. Rui Xu, Hanzhi Lin, Enzong Xiao, Zhimin Xu, Qi Wang, and Gao Pin offered comments for revisions to the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Huang, D., Xu, R., Sun, X. et al. Effects of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) on activated sludge microbial community under aerobic and anaerobic conditions. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 63379–63392 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-18841-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-18841-8