title: Assessment of microbial diversity in effluent treatment plants by culture dependent and culture independent approaches.
abstract: Microbial community structure of two distinct effluent treatment plants (ETPs) of pesticide and pharmaceutical industries was assessed and defined by (i) culture dependent and culture independent approaches on the basis of 16S rRNA gene sequencing, (ii) diversity index analysis - operational taxonomic units (OTUs). A total of 38 and 44 bacterial OTUs having 85-99% similarity with the closest match in the database were detected among pharmaceutical and pesticide sludge samples, respectively. Fifty percent of the OTUs were related to uncultured bacteria. These OTUs had a Shannon diversity index value of 2.09-2.33 for culturables and in the range of 3.25-3.38 for unculturables. The high species evenness values of 0.86 and 0.95 indicated the vastness of microbial diversity retrieved by these approaches. The dominant cultured bacteria indicative of microbial diversity in functional ETPs were Alcaligenes, Bacillus and Pseudomonas. Brevundimonas, Citrobacter, Pandoraea and Stenotrophomonas were specific to pesticide ETP and Agrobacterium, Brevibacterium, Micrococcus, Microbacterium, Paracoccus and Rhodococcus were specific to pharmaceutical ETP. These microbes can thus be maintained and exploited for efficient functioning and maintenance of ETPs.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB), CSIR, Delhi University Campus, Mall Road, Delhi - 110007, India.
authors.forename: Asha
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rani
authors.forename: Shalini
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Porwal
authors.forename: Rakesh
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Sharma
authors.forename: Atya
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kapley
authors.forename: Hemant J
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Purohit
authors.forename: Vipin Chandra
authors.initials: VC
authors.lastname: Kalia
mesh_terms: D001419:Bacteria / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D001483:Base Sequence; D017931:DNA Primers; D010802:Phylogeny; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D012336:RNA, Ribosomal, 16S / Q000235:genetics; D013045:Species Specificity; D014871:Water Microbiology
chemical_list: D017931:DNA Primers; D012336:RNA, Ribosomal, 16S