Determination of growth kinetics of microorganisms linked with 1,4-dioxane degradation in a consortium based on two improved methods

Highlights

● Evaluated three methods for determining the consortia’s growth kinetics.

● Conventional method is flawed since it relies on the total biomass concentration.

● Considering only selected bacterial taxa improved the accuracy.

● Considering oligotrophs and copiotrophs further improved the accuracy.

Abstract

The conventional method for determining growth kinetics of microbial consortia relies on the total biomass concentration. This may be inaccurate for substrates that are uncommon in nature and can only be degraded by a small portion of the microbial community. 1,4-dioxane, an emerging contaminant, is an example of such substrates. In this work, we evaluated an improved method for determining the growth kinetics of a 1,4-dioxane-degrading microbial consortium. In the improved method, we considered only bacterial taxa whose concentration increase correlated to 1,4-dioxane concentration decrease in duplicate microcosm tests. Using PEST (Parameter Estimation), a model-independent parameter estimator, the kinetic constants were estimated by fitting the Monod kinetics-based simulation results to the experimental data that consisted of the concentrations of 1,4-dioxane and the considered bacterial taxa. The estimated kinetic constants were evaluated by comparing the simulation results with experimental results from another set of microcosm tests. The evaluation was quantified by the sum of squared relative residual, which was four orders of magnitude lower for the improved method than the conventional method. By further dividing the considered bacterial taxa into oligotrophs and copiotrophs, the sum of squared relative residual further decreased.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Biodegradation / 1,4-Dioxane / Kinetics / Microbial consortium / 16S rRNA

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by Geosyntec Consultants through contract RF02700. Work performed at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory ICR Facility is supported by the National Science Foundation Division of Chemistry through DMR-1644779 and the state of Florida. The authors wish to thank Dr. Stefan J Green at the Genome Research Core at the University of Illinois at Chicago for 16S rRNA sequencing. The authors state that there are no conflicts of interest in this work.

Electronic Supplementary Material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-022-1567-y and is accessible for authorized users.

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