Phage diversity in activated sludge reflects the environmental differences that select for host bacterial communities

ERIJMAN, L.; GUERRERO, L.D.; ORELLANA, E.; FIGUEROLA, E.L.M.; PEREZ, M.V.

Florianopolis

Congreso; The 14th IWA Leading Edge Conference on Water and Wastewater Technologies; 2017

International Water Association (IWA)

This report describes the study of phage and bacterial metagenomes of activated sludge samples from a full-scale municipal wastewater treatment plant performing along a gradient of solid retention times, over a period of three years. Co-occurrence of bacterial species was highly dependent on the operational regime. Low SRTs were associated with bacteria characterized by high maximum growth rates, whereas higher SRTs were distinguished by phyla withslower growth rates and higher substrate affinities. Most of the contigs assembled from the reads of supernatant data with size larger than 5 kb, which could be assigned taxonomically, were classified as phages belonging to the order Caudovirales. Interestingly, shifts in phage composition mirrored those changes in bacteria, suggesting that phage ecology reflect the environmental differences that select the host bacteria