title: Microbial community structure accompanied with electricity production in a constructed wetland plant microbial fuel cell.
abstract: This study reveals the complex structure of bacterial and archaeal communities associated with a Canna indica plant microbial fuel cell (PMFC) and its electricity production. The PMFC produced a maximum current of 105 mA/m(2) by utilizing rhizodeposits as the sole electron donor without any external nutrient or buffer supplements, which demonstrates the feasibility of PMFCs in practical oligotrophic conditions with low solution conductivity. The microbial diversity was significantly higher in the PMFC than non-plant controls or sediment-only controls, and pyrosequencing and clone library reveal that rhizodeposits conversion to current were carried out by syntrophic interactions between fermentative bacteria (e.g., Anaerolineaceae) and electrochemically active bacteria (e.g., Geobacter). Denitrifying bacteria and acetotrophic methanogens play a minor role in organics degradation, but abundant hydrogenotrophic methanogens and thermophilic archaea are likely main electron donor competitors.
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.
authors.forename: Lu
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resource and Environment, School of Municipal and Environmental Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150090, China.
authors.forename: Defeng
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Xing
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309, USA. Electronic address: jason.ren@colorado.edu.
authors.forename: Zhiyong Jason
authors.initials: ZJ
authors.lastname: Ren
mesh_terms: D001105:Archaea / Q000378:metabolism*; D001419:Bacteria / Q000378:metabolism*; D001483:Base Sequence; D044822:Biodiversity; D001674:Bioelectric Energy Sources; D004560:Electricity; D045302:Geobacter / Q000378:metabolism; D010802:Phylogeny; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D053833:Wetlands; D019862:Zingiberales / Q000378:metabolism*
keywords: Canna indica; Constructed wetland; Microbial community structure; Plant microbial fuel cell (PMFC); Rhizodeposits