Characterization of Thauera-dominated hydrogen-oxidizing autotrophic denitrifying microbial communities by using high-throughput sequencing

The present study, for the first time, reported a Thauera-dominated hydrogen-oxidizing autotrophic denitrifying microbial community enriched from different seed sludges including activated sludge and anaerobic digestion sludge. After 244 days enrichment, nitrogen removal rates reached up to 0.2 mg N/mg VSS/d which were comparable to that of the model organism Paracoccus denitrificans under the same conditions. Furthermore, high-throughput sequencing was applied to characterize and compare the seed sludges and enriched cultures. Operational taxonomic units (OTU)-based analysis (97% similarity cutoff) of total 280,000 16S rRNA gene V6 region sequences from 7 sludge samples (40,000 sequences per sample) revealed that the microbial diversity decreased after the enrichment, indicated by OTU numbers drop of 55–60%. Thauera species in the class of β-Proteobacteria were enriched into the dominant populations with relative abundances of 47–62%, regardless of seed sludge sources.