scholarly journals Reproducible microbial community dynamics of two drinking water systems treating similar source waters

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah C Potgieter ◽  
Ameet J Pinto ◽  
Minette Havenga ◽  
Makhosazana Sigudu ◽  
Stefanus N Venter
Keyword(s):  
Drinking Water ◽  
Microbial Community ◽  
Microbial Communities ◽  
Surface Waters ◽  
Distribution Systems ◽  
Community Dynamics ◽  
Microbial Community Dynamics ◽  
Two Systems ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Source Waters

AbstractIn addition to containing higher concentrations of organics and bacterial cells, surface waters are often more vulnerable to pollution and microbial contamination with intensive industrial and agricultural activities frequently occurring in areas surrounding the water source. Therefore, surface waters typically require additional treatment, where the choice of treatment strategy is critical for water quality. Using 16S rRNA gene profiling, this study provides a unique opportunity to simultaneously investigate and compare two drinking water treatment plants and their corresponding distribution systems. The two treatment plants treat similar surface waters, from the same river system, with the same sequential treatment strategies. Here, the impact of treatment and distribution on the microbial community within and between each system was compared over an eight-month sampling campaign. Overall, reproducible spatial and temporal dynamics within both DWTPs and their corresponding DWDSs were observed. Although source waters showed some dissimilarity in microbial community structure and composition, pre-disinfection treatments (i.e. coagulation, flocculation, sedimentation and filtration) resulted in highly similar microbial communities between the filter effluent samples. This indicated that the same treatments resulted in the development of similar microbial communities. Conversely, post-disinfection (i.e. chlorination and chloramination) resulted in increased dissimilarity between disinfected samples from the two systems, showing alternative responses of the microbial community to disinfection. Lastly, it was observed that within the distribution system the same dominant taxa were selected where samples increased in similarity with increased residence time. Although, differences were found between the two systems, overall treatment and distribution had a similar impact on the microbial community in each system. This study therefore provides valuable information on the impact of treatment and distribution on the drinking water microbiome.HighlightsSource waters show some dissimilarity in microbial community.Treatment processes increases similarity and selects for the same dominant taxa.Differential response to chlorination causing increased dissimilarity and variation.Stabilisation of DWDS microbial community through selection of same dominant taxa.Microbial community dynamics are reproducible between the two systems.

scholarly journals Reproducible Microbial Community Dynamics of Two Drinking Water Systems Treating Similar Source Waters

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Potgieter ◽  
Zihan Dai ◽  
Minette Havenga ◽  
Solize Vosloo ◽  
Makhosazana Sigudu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Drinking Water ◽  
Microbial Community ◽  
Community Dynamics ◽  
Water Systems ◽  
Microbial Community Dynamics ◽  
Source Waters ◽  
Drinking Water Systems

scholarly journals Visualizing Microbial Community Dynamics via a Controllable Soil Environment

mSystems ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Arunima Bhattacharjee ◽  
Dusan Velickovic ◽  
Thomas W. Wietsma ◽  
Sheryl L. Bell ◽  
Janet K. Jansson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
Microbial Community ◽  
Microbial Communities ◽  
Community Dynamics ◽  
Soil Microbial Communities ◽  
Soil Microbiome ◽  
Soil Core ◽  
Soil Microbial ◽  
Functional Relationships ◽  
Microbial Community Dynamics

ABSTRACT Understanding the basic biology that underpins soil microbiome interactions is required to predict the metaphenomic response to environmental shifts. A significant knowledge gap remains in how such changes affect microbial community dynamics and their metabolic landscape at microbially relevant spatial scales. Using a custom-built SoilBox system, here we demonstrated changes in microbial community growth and composition in different soil environments (14%, 24%, and 34% soil moisture), contingent upon access to reservoirs of nutrient sources. The SoilBox emulates the probing depth of a common soil core and enables determination of both the spatial organization of the microbial communities and their metabolites, as shown by confocal microscopy in combination with mass spectrometry imaging (MSI). Using chitin as a nutrient source, we used the SoilBox system to observe increased adhesion of microbial biomass on chitin islands resulting in degradation of chitin into N-acetylglucosamine (NAG) and chitobiose. With matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI)-MSI, we also observed several phospholipid families that are functional biomarkers for microbial growth on the chitin islands. Fungal hyphal networks bridging different chitin islands over distances of 27 mm were observed only in the 14% soil moisture regime, indicating that such bridges may act as nutrient highways under drought conditions. In total, these results illustrate a system that can provide unprecedented spatial information about interactions within soil microbial communities as a function of changing environments. We anticipate that this platform will be invaluable in spatially probing specific intra- and interkingdom functional relationships of microbiomes within soil. IMPORTANCE Microbial communities are key components of the soil ecosystem. Recent advances in metagenomics and other omics capabilities have expanded our ability to characterize the composition and function of the soil microbiome. However, characterizing the spatial metabolic and morphological diversity of microbial communities remains a challenge due to the dynamic and complex nature of soil microenvironments. The SoilBox system, demonstrated in this work, simulates an ∼12-cm soil depth, similar to a typical soil core, and provides a platform that facilitates imaging the molecular and topographical landscape of soil microbial communities as a function of environmental gradients. Moreover, the nondestructive harvesting of soil microbial communities for the imaging experiments can enable simultaneous multiomics analysis throughout the depth of the SoilBox. Our results show that by correlating molecular and optical imaging data obtained using the SoilBox platform, deeper insights into the nature of specific soil microbial interactions can be achieved.

scholarly journals Towards a Better Understanding of Microbial Community Dynamics through High-Throughput Cultivation and Data Integration

mSystems ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Karoline Faust
Keyword(s):  
Microbial Community ◽  
High Throughput ◽  
Community Dynamics ◽  
Analysis Software ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Microbial Community Dynamics ◽  
Lack Of Control ◽  
Basic Parameters ◽  
Community Data ◽  
The Impact

ABSTRACT The investigation of microbial community dynamics is hampered by low resolution, a lack of control, and a small number of replicates. These deficiencies can be tackled with defined communities grown under well-controlled conditions in high-throughput automated cultivation devices. Besides delivering high-quality microbial community data, automated cultivation will also ease measurement of the basic parameters needed to parameterize mathematical models of microbial communities. Better experimental data will allow revisiting classical ecological questions, such as the impact of community structure on dynamics. In addition, such data will allow validation and comparison of community models and benchmarking of microbial data analysis software. In summary, high-throughput automated cultivation will lead to a deeper understanding of microbial community dynamics through better models and software.

scholarly journals Microbial Community Dynamics of an Urban Drinking Water Distribution System Subjected to Phases of Chloramination and Chlorination Treatments

2012 ◽  
Vol 78 (22) ◽  
pp. 7856-7865 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiachi Hwang ◽  
Fangqiong Ling ◽  
Gary L. Andersen ◽  
Mark W. LeChevallier ◽  
Wen-Tso Liu
Keyword(s):  
Drinking Water ◽  
Microbial Community ◽  
Microbial Communities ◽  
Distribution Systems ◽  
Water Distribution ◽  
Microbial Populations ◽  
Rrna Gene ◽  
Source Water ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Drinking Water Distribution

ABSTRACTWater utilities in parts of the U.S. control microbial regrowth in drinking water distribution systems (DWDS) by alternating postdisinfection methods between chlorination and chloramination. To examine how this strategy influences drinking water microbial communities, an urban DWDS (population ≅ 40,000) with groundwater as the source water was studied for approximately 2 years. Water samples were collected at five locations in the network at different seasons and analyzed for their chemical and physical characteristics and for their microbial community composition and structure by examining the 16S rRNA gene via terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism and DNA pyrosequencing technology. Nonmetric multidimension scaling and canonical correspondence analysis of microbial community profiles could explain >57% of the variation. Clustering of samples based on disinfection types (free chlorine versus combined chlorine) and sampling time was observed to correlate to the shifts in microbial communities. Sampling location and water age (<21.2 h) had no apparent effects on the microbial compositions of samples from most time points. Microbial community analysis revealed that among major core populations,Cyanobacteria,Methylobacteriaceae,Sphingomonadaceae, andXanthomonadaceaewere more abundant in chlorinated water, andMethylophilaceae,Methylococcaceae, andPseudomonadaceaewere more abundant in chloraminated water. No correlation was observed with minor populations that were detected frequently (<0.1% of total pyrosequences), which were likely present in source water and survived through the treatment process. Transient microbial populations includingFlavobacteriaceaeandClostridiaceaewere also observed. Overall, reversible shifts in microbial communities were especially pronounced with chloramination, suggesting stronger selection of microbial populations from chloramines than chlorine.

scholarly journals Ecological Stability Properties of Microbial Communities Assessed by Flow Cytometry

mSphere ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zishu Liu ◽  
Nicolas Cichocki ◽  
Fabian Bonk ◽  
Susanne Günther ◽  
Florian Schattenberg ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Flow Cytometry ◽  
Microbial Community ◽  
Microbial Communities ◽  
Temporal Resolution ◽  
Community Dynamics ◽  
Well Being ◽  
High Temporal Resolution ◽  
Ecological Stability ◽  
Stability Properties ◽  
Microbial Community Dynamics

Microbial communities drive many processes which affect human well-being directly, as in the human microbiome, or indirectly, as in natural environments or in biotechnological applications. Due to their complexity, their dynamics over time is difficult to monitor, and current sequence-based approaches are limited with respect to the temporal resolution. However, in order to eventually control microbial community dynamics, monitoring schemes of high temporal resolution are required. Flow cytometry provides single-cell-based data in the required temporal resolution, and we here use such data to compute stability properties as easy to interpret univariate indicators of microbial community dynamics. Such monitoring tools will allow for a fast, continuous, and cost-effective screening of stability states of microbiomes. Applicable to various environments, including bioreactors, surface water, and the human body, it will contribute to the development of control schemes to manipulate microbial community structures and performances.

scholarly journals Constrained proteome allocation affects coexistence in models of competitive microbial communities

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonardo Pacciani-Mori ◽  
Samir Suweis ◽  
Amos Maritan ◽  
Andrea Giometto
Keyword(s):  
Population Dynamics ◽  
Microbial Community ◽  
Microbial Communities ◽  
Community Dynamics ◽  
Bacterial Strains ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Microbial Community Dynamics ◽  
Common Resource ◽  
Multiple Species ◽  
Consumer Resource

Microbial communities are ubiquitous and play crucial roles in many natural processes. Despite their importance for the environment, industry and human health, there are still many aspects of microbial community dynamics that we do not understand quantitatively. Recent experiments have shown that the metabolism of species in a community is intertwined with its composition, suggesting that properties at the intracellular level such as the allocation of cellular proteomic resources must be taken into account when describing microbial communities with a population dynamics approach. In this work we reconsider one of the theoretical frameworks most commonly used to model population dynamics in competitive ecosystems, MacArthur’s consumer-resource model, in light of experimental evidence showing how pro-teome allocation affects microbial growth. This new framework allows us to describe community dynamics at an intermediate level of complexity between classical consumer-resource models and biochemical models of microbial metabolism, accounting for temporally-varying proteome allocation subject to constraints on growth and protein synthesis in the presence of multiple resources, while preserving analytical insight into the dynamics of the system. We first show experimentally that proteome allocation needs to be accounted for to properly understand the dynamics of even the simplest microbial community, i.e. two bacterial strains competing for one common resource. We then study the model analytically and numerically to determine the conditions that allow multiple species to coexist in systems with arbitrary numbers of species and resources.

scholarly journals Small subsets of highly connected taxa predict compositional change in microbial communities

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina M. Herren ◽  
Katherine D. McMahon
Keyword(s):  
Microbial Community ◽  
Microbial Communities ◽  
Community Dynamics ◽  
External Disturbance ◽  
Biotic Interactions ◽  
Microbial Community Dynamics ◽  
Community Turnover ◽  
Community Shifts ◽  
Curtis Dissimilarity ◽  
Community Connectivity

AbstractFor decades, ecological theory has predicted that the complexity of communities should be related to their stability. However, this prediction has rarely been tested empirically, because of both the difficulty of finding suitable systems where the question is tractable and the trouble of defining “stability” in real systems. Microbial communities provide the opportunity to investigate a related question: how does community connectivity relate to the rate of compositional turnover? We used a newly developed metric called community “cohesion” to test how microbial community connectivity relates to Bray-Curtis dissimilarity through time. In three long-term datasets, we found that stronger connectivity corresponded to lower rates of compositional turnover. Using two case studies of disturbed and reference communities, we found that the predictive power of community connectivity was diminished by external disturbance. Finally, we tested whether the highly connected taxa were disproportionately important in explaining compositional turnover. We found that subsets of highly connected “keystone” taxa, generally comprising 1-5% of community richness, explained community turnover better than using all taxa. Our results suggest that stronger biotic interactions within microbial community dynamics are stabilizing to community composition, and that highly connected taxa are good indicators of pending community shifts.

scholarly journals A Long-Standing Complex Tropical Dipole Shapes Marine Microbial Biogeography

2018 ◽  
Vol 84 (18) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Yan ◽  
Rui Zhang ◽  
Nianzhi Jiao
Keyword(s):  
Community Structure ◽  
Microbial Community ◽  
Microbial Communities ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Community Dynamics ◽  
Anticyclonic Eddy ◽  
Cyclonic Eddy ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Microbial Community Dynamics ◽  
Biogeographic Provinces

ABSTRACTMicrobial population size, production, diversity, and community structure are greatly influenced by the surrounding physicochemical conditions, such as large-scale biogeographic provinces and water masses. An oceanic mesoscale dipole consists of a cyclonic eddy and an anticyclonic eddy. Dipoles occur frequently in the ocean and usually last from a few days to several months; they have significant impacts on local and global oceanic biological, ecological, and geochemical processes. To better understand how dipoles shape microbial communities, we examined depth-resolved distributions of microbial communities across a dipole in the South China Sea. Our data demonstrated that the dipole had a substantial influence on microbial distributions, community structure, and functional groups both vertically and horizontally. Large alpha and beta diversity differences were observed between anticyclonic and cyclonic eddies in surface and subsurface layers, consistent with distribution changes of major bacterial groups in the dipole. The dipole created uplift, downward transport, enrichment, depletion, and horizontal transport effects. We also found that the edge of the dipole might induce strong subduction, indicated by the presence ofProchlorococcusandSynechococcusin deep waters. Our findings suggest that dipoles, with their unique characteristics, might act as a driver for microbial community dynamics.IMPORTANCEOceanic dipoles, which consist of a cyclonic eddy and an anticyclonic eddy together, are among the most contrasted phenomena in the ocean. Dipoles generate strong vertical mixing and horizontal advection, inducing biological responses. This study provides vertical profiles of microbial abundance, diversity, and community structure in a mesoscale dipole. We identify the links between the physical oceanography and microbial oceanography and demonstrate that the dipole, with its unique features, could act as a driver for microbial community dynamics, which may have large impacts on both the local and global marine biogeochemical cycles.

scholarly journals Microbial Community Dynamics during Rearing of Black Soldier Fly Larvae ( Hermetia illucens ) and Impact on Exploitation Potential

2018 ◽  
Vol 84 (9) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeroen De Smet ◽  
Enya Wynants ◽  
Paul Cos ◽  
Leen Van Campenhout
Keyword(s):  
Microbial Community ◽  
Community Dynamics ◽  
Animal Feed ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Black Soldier Fly ◽  
Hermetia Illucens ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Microbial Community Dynamics ◽  
The Impact

ABSTRACT The need to increase sustainability in agriculture, to ensure food security for the future generations, is leading to the emergence of industrial rearing facilities for insects. One promising species being industrially reared as an alternative protein source for animal feed and as a raw material for the chemical industry is the black soldier fly ( Hermetia illucens ). However, scientific knowledge toward the optimization of the productivity for this insect is scarce. One knowledge gap concerns the impact of the microbial community associated with H. illucens on the performance and health of this insect. In this review, the first steps in the characterization of the microbiota in H. illucens and the analysis of substrate-dependent dynamics in its composition are summarized and discussed. Furthermore, this review zooms in on the interactions between microorganisms and the insect during H. illucens development. Finally, attention is paid to how the microbiome research can lead to alternative valorization strategies for H. illucens , such as (i) the manipulation of the microbiota to optimize insect biomass production and (ii) the exploitation of the H. illucens -microbiota interplay for the discovery of new enzymes and novel antimicrobial strategies based on H. illucens immunity using either the whole organism or its molecules. The next decade promises to be extremely interesting for this research field and will see an emergence of the microbiological optimization of H. illucens as a sustainable insect for industrial rearing and the exploitation of its microbiome for novel biotechnological applications.

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