Monitoring microbial community function during methane formation in a wastewater treatment**digester

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Anaerobic digestion of wastewater is catalyzed by microbial community metabolism resulting in the**conversion of settled particulates (primary sludge) and flocculated biomass (secondary sludge) into potentially**useful products including methane (CH4), a major component in biogas. Commercial-scale anaerobic digesters**(AD), can have low biomass conversion to CH4 and produce significant amounts of biosolids that can be costly**to remove. Bench-scale research has shown evidence of the potential to substantially increase CH4 content of**biogas through the control of microbial community structure and function. In partnership with Metro**Vancouver, UBC's Department of Microbiology & Immunology is developing microbial insights by monitoring**the AD and solids contact tank (SCT) at the Lulu Island wastewater treatment plant in Richmond, BC using**high-throughput sequencing approaches. Samples were collected as part of our previous ENGAGE project to**establish a sample archive supporting robust time series analyses. Preliminary results indicate that microbial**community structure remains stable at the phylum level in both the AD and SCT, but becomes more variable at**lower taxonomic ranks. The extent to which rank variation influences metabolic processes in the wastewater**milieu remains to be determined. Archaeal sequences related to organisms with known capacity for**methanogenesis were identified in the AD samples. However, they collectively represented less than 0.5% of**taxa observed suggesting that enhancement of methanogen population sizes may be a direct target for process**improvement. We would like to extend this work effort through the ENGAGE Plus program to further evaluate**the balance between methanogens and other taxa mediating hydrolysis and fermentation steps. This will**include comparative community structure analysis and the integration of shotgun multi-omic (DNA and RNA)**sequencing enabling pathway-centric analysis linking specific metabolic functions to identified taxonomic**groups.