Metagenomics of wastewater treatment

FEDERICO M. IBARBALZ; EVA L. M. FIGUEROLA; LEONARDO ERIJMAN

Shanghai

Conferencia; 2013 International Students Conference on Environment and Sustainability; 2013

UNEP-Tongji Institute of Environment for Sustainable Development

Wastewater is any water that has been adversley affected by anthropogenic activity. Cities all around the world generate enormous volumes of wastewater, which have to be treated before being released into the environment, in order to prevent ecological damage and health issues. The costs of polluting water sources would be definitely higher compared to the costs of treatment and prevention. Several treatment systems have been developed, based on physical, chemical and biological processes. Activated sludge systems are used worldwide and consist in microbial consortia that degrade organic matter, remove nutrients and form settling aggregates that separate from treated water. Using the state of the art of genomic technologies based on high-throughput DNA sequencing we explored bacterial diversity of activated sludge at facilities that treat different types of wastewater, to better understand the drivers of community composition and at the same time, to link taxonomical and functional diversity to process performance. In this sense, we are contributing to the worlwide efforts to survey and understand activated sludge microbiome.