PICRUSt2 functionally predicts organic compounds degradation and sulfate reduction pathways in an acidogenic bioreactor

Highlights

• Over 70% reduction of sulfate was achieved for sulfate less than 12000 mg/L.

• The decrease of genes encoding (EC: 1.3.8.1) induced the accumulation of VFAs.

• The sulfate reduction genes were primary carried by genus Desulfovibrio.

• Sulfate favored assimilatory, but inhibited dissimilatory sulfate reduction process.

Abstract

For comprehensive insights into the influences of sulfate on performance, microbial community and metabolic pathways in the acidification phase of a two-phase anaerobic system, a laboratory-scale acidogenic bioreactor was continuously operated to treat wastewater with elevated sulfate concentrations from 2000 to 14000 mg/L. The results showed that the acidogenic bioreactor could achieve sulfate reduction efficiency of greater than 70% for influent sulfate content less than 12000 mg/L. Increased sulfate induced the accumulation of volatile fatty acids (VFAs), especially propionate and butyrate, which was the primary negative effects to system performance under the high-sulfate environment. High-throughput sequencing coupled with PICRUSt2 uncovered that the accumulation of VFAs was triggered by the decreasing of genes encoding short-chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase (EC: 1.3.8.1), regulating the transformation of propanoyl-CoA to propenoyl-CoA and butanoyl-CoA to crotonyl-CoA of propionate and butyrate oxidation pathways, which made these two process hardly proceed. Besides, genes encoding (EC: 1.3.8.1) were mainly carried by order Clostridiales. Desulfovibrio was the most abundant sulfate-reducing bacteria and identified as the primary host of dissimilatory sulfate reduction functional genes. Functional analysis indicated the dissimilatory sulfate reduction process predominated under a low sulfate environment, but was not favored under the circumstance of high-sulfate. With the increase of sulfate, the assimilatory sulfate reduction process finally overwhelmed dissimilatory as the dominant sulfate reduction pathway in acidogenic bioreactor.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Acidogenic phase reactor / High-sulfate wastewater / Sulfate reduction / Acidogenic fermentation / PICRUSt2

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge generous support provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51978328). We thank LetPub (www.letpub.com) for its linguistic assistance during the preparation of this manuscript.

Electronic Supplementary Material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-021-1481-8 and is accessible for authorized users.

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