TY - JOUR
T1 - Temperature and immigration effects on quorum sensing in the biofilms of anaerobic membrane bioreactors
AU - Tabraiz, Shamas
AU - Petropoulos, Evangelos
AU - Shamurad, Burhan
AU - Quintela-Baluja, Marcos
AU - Mohapatra, Sanjeeb
AU - Acharya, Kishor
AU - Charlton, Alex
AU - Davenport, Russell J.
AU - Dolfing, Jan
AU - Sallis, Paul J.
N1 - Funding Information:
We gratefully acknowledge funding from Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in UK and Newcastle University UK; Evangelos Petropoulos and Jan Dolfing acknowledge BB/K003240/1 (Engineering synthetic microbial communities for biomethane production).
PY - 2021/9/1
Y1 - 2021/9/1
N2 - Quorum sensing (QS), a microbial communication mechanism modulated by acyl homoserine lactone (AHL) molecules impacts biofilm formation in bioreactors. This study investigated the effects of temperature and immigration on AHL levels and biofouling in anaerobic membrane bioreactors. The hypothesis was that the immigrant microbial community would increase the AHL-mediated QS, thus stimulating biofouling and that low temperatures would exacerbate this. We observed that presence of immigrants, especially when exposed to low temperatures indeed increased AHL concentrations and fouling in the biofilms on the membranes. At low temperature, the concentrations of the main AHLs observed, N-dodecanoyl-L-homoserine lactone and N-decanoyl-L-homoserine lactone, were significantly higher in the biofilms than in the sludge and correlated significantly with the abundance of immigrant bacteria. Apparently low temperature, immigration and denser community structure in the biofilm stressed the communities, triggering AHL production and excretion. These insights into the social behaviour of reactor communities responding to low temperature and influx of immigrants have implications for biofouling control in bioreactors.
AB - Quorum sensing (QS), a microbial communication mechanism modulated by acyl homoserine lactone (AHL) molecules impacts biofilm formation in bioreactors. This study investigated the effects of temperature and immigration on AHL levels and biofouling in anaerobic membrane bioreactors. The hypothesis was that the immigrant microbial community would increase the AHL-mediated QS, thus stimulating biofouling and that low temperatures would exacerbate this. We observed that presence of immigrants, especially when exposed to low temperatures indeed increased AHL concentrations and fouling in the biofilms on the membranes. At low temperature, the concentrations of the main AHLs observed, N-dodecanoyl-L-homoserine lactone and N-decanoyl-L-homoserine lactone, were significantly higher in the biofilms than in the sludge and correlated significantly with the abundance of immigrant bacteria. Apparently low temperature, immigration and denser community structure in the biofilm stressed the communities, triggering AHL production and excretion. These insights into the social behaviour of reactor communities responding to low temperature and influx of immigrants have implications for biofouling control in bioreactors.
KW - Anaerobic membrane bioreactor
KW - Fouling
KW - Immigrant community effect
KW - Low-temperature effect
KW - Quorum sensing
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85107676853&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.112947
DO - 10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.112947
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85107676853
SN - 0301-4797
VL - 293
JO - Journal of Environmental Management
JF - Journal of Environmental Management
M1 - 112947
ER -