title: Inoculum composition determines microbial community and function in an anaerobic sequential batch reactor.
abstract: The sustainable recovery of resources from wastewater streams can provide many social and environmental benefits. A common strategy to recover valuable resources from wastewater is to harness the products of fermentation by complex microbial communities. In these fermentation bioreactors high microbial community diversity within the inoculum source is commonly assumed as sufficient for the selection of a functional microbial community. However, variability of the product profile obtained from these bioreactors is a persistent challenge in this field. In an attempt to address this variability, the impact of inoculum on the microbial community structure and function within the bioreactor was evaluated using controlled laboratory experiments. In the course of this work, sequential batch reactors were inoculated with three complex microbial inocula and the chemical and microbial compositions were monitored by HPLC and 16S rRNA amplicon analysis, respectively. Microbial community dynamics and chemical profiles were found to be distinct to initial inoculate and highly reproducible. Additionally we found that the generation of a complex volatile fatty acid profile was not specific to the diversity of the initial microbial inoculum. Our results suggest that the composition of the original inoculum predictably contributes to bioreactor community structure and function.
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, United States of America.
authors.forename: Allison R
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Perrotta
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering (CEE), Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi, UAE.
authors.forename: Rajkumari
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kumaraswamy
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering (CEE), Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi, UAE.
authors.forename: Juan R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Bastidas-Oyanedel
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, United States of America.|Department of Biological Engineering, MIT, Cambridge, MA, United States of America.|Broad Institute of MIT, Cambridge, MA, United States of America.
authors.forename: Eric J
authors.initials: EJ
authors.lastname: Alm
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering (CEE), Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi, UAE.
authors.forename: Jorge
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5936-9676
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Rodríguez
mesh_terms: D000693:Anaerobiosis / Q000502:physiology; D019149:Bioreactors / Q000382:microbiology*; D005232:Fatty Acids, Volatile / Q000096:biosynthesis; D059013:Microbial Consortia / Q000502:physiology*; D012336:RNA, Ribosomal, 16S / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D005232:Fatty Acids, Volatile; D012336:RNA, Ribosomal, 16S