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A Novel Phosphate-Accumulating Bacterium Identified in a Bioreactor for Phosphate Removal from Wastewater

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Abstract—Biotechnologies involving phosphate-accumulating organisms, which collect inorganic phosphates from the medium as polyphosphates during cyclic growth under aerobic and anaerobic conditions, are presently applied for phosphorus removal from wastewater. Betaproteobacteria of the candidate genus ‘Candidatus Accumulibacter’ carry out phosphate accumulation in most systems for wastewater treatment. However, no member of ‘Ca. Accumulibacter’ has been isolated in pure culture. Metagenomic analysis of the microbial consortium formed in a laboratory setup for phosphate removal from wastewater and removing up to 80% phosphorus from the medium was carried out. Members of the phyla Proteobacteria (82.5%), Bacteroidetes (10.5%), and Chloroflexi (1.6%) predominated in the community. Among the proteobacteria, Betaproteobacteria were revealed, among which ‘Ca. Accumulibacter’ predominated, as well as Gammaproteobacteria (26.8%), which mainly belonged to the family ‘Ca. Competibacteraceae.’ Metagenomic data were used to obtain the genome of the dominant phosphate-accumulating bacterium, which belonged to a new ‘Ca. Accumulibacter’ species. The studied community was promising both for further basic research on metabolism of phosphate-accumulating organisms and for improvement of existing biotechnologies for phosphorus removal from wastewater.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Bioengineering, Research Center of Biotechnology, Russian Academy of Sciences, 119071, Moscow, Russia

    R. Yu. Kotlyarov, A. V. Beletsky, N. V. Ravin & A. V. Mardanov

  2. Winogradsky Institute of Microbiology, Research Center of Biotechnology, Russian Academy of Sciences, 119071, Moscow, Russia

    A. Yu. Kallistova, A. G. Dorofeev, Yu. A. Nikolaev & N. V. Pimenov

Authors
  1. R. Yu. Kotlyarov
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  2. A. V. Beletsky
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  3. A. Yu. Kallistova
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  4. A. G. Dorofeev
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  5. Yu. A. Nikolaev
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  6. N. V. Pimenov
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  7. N. V. Ravin
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  8. A. V. Mardanov
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Correspondence to A. V. Mardanov.

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COMPLIANCE WITH ETHICAL STANDARDS

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. This article does not contain any studies involving animals or human participants performed by any of the authors.

Author contributions: R.Yu. Kotlyarov, A.V. Beletsky, N.V. Ravin, and A.V. Mardanov‒obtaining and analyzing the metagenomic data; A.Yu. Kallistova, A.G. Dorofeev, Yu.A. Nikolaev, and N.V. Pimenov—assembly and launch of a setup for phosphorus removal from wastewater, as well as selection of optimal conditions for the cultivation of microorganisms that provide for the best phosphorus removal.

FUNDING

The work was funded by Russian Foundation for Basic Research (project no. 18-34-00627) and by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation.

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Translated by A. Bulaev

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Kotlyarov, R.Y., Beletsky, A.V., Kallistova, A.Y. et al. A Novel Phosphate-Accumulating Bacterium Identified in a Bioreactor for Phosphate Removal from Wastewater. Microbiology 88, 751–755 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1134/S0026261719060055

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S0026261719060055

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