Microbial community structure in a biogas digester utilizing the marine energy crop Saccharina latissima.
Seaweed is a highly attractive marine crop for the production of biofuels, due to its rapid growth rate as well as high polysaccharide and low lignin content. One appealing exploitation route is the production of biogas by anaerobic digestion. Interestingly, despite the compositional differences between seaweed and lignocellulosic biomass, available data indicate that conditions and inocula traditionally used for the latter may work well for seaweed. To gain more insight into the underlying microbial processes, we have generated 16S rRNA gene amplicon pyrosequencing data to comparatively describe microbial communities in biogas digesters containing either the seaweed Saccharina latissima or wheat straw. The seaweed digesters gave better biogas yield and a higher relative abundance of core group Methanosaeta-affiliated Archaea. Conversely, variation in biomass had only minor abundance effects towards dominant bacterial lineages and influenced only low-abundant bacterial OTUs. Affiliations between dominant archaeal and bacterial phylotypes described here and previously identified anaerobic digestion core groups indicate that trends are beginning to emerge within these newly explored microbial ecosystems, the understanding of which is currently impeded by limited published datasets.
Department of Chemistry, Biotechnology and Food Science, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Post Office Box 5003, 1432, Ås, Norway. phil.pope@umb.no.
Phillip B
PB
Pope
Department of Chemistry, Biotechnology and Food Science, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Post Office Box 5003, 1432, Ås, Norway.
Vivekanand
V
Vivekanand
Department of Chemistry, Biotechnology and Food Science, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Post Office Box 5003, 1432, Ås, Norway.
Vincent G H
VG
Eijsink
Department of Chemistry, Biotechnology and Food Science, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Post Office Box 5003, 1432, Ås, Norway.
Svein J
SJ
Horn
Anaerobic digestion; Biogas; Macroalgae; Methane; Seaweed