Little is known about the bacterial diversity of landfills and how environmental factors impact the diversity. In this study, PCR-based 454 pyrosequencing was used to investigate the bacterial communities of ten landfill leachate samples from five landfill sites in China. A total of 137 K useable sequences from the V3-V6 regions of the 16S rRNA gene were retrieved from 205 K reads. These sequences revealed the presence of a large number of operational taxonomic units (OTUs) in the landfills (709-1599 OTUs per sample). The most predominant bacterial representatives in the landfills investigated, regardless of geographic area, included Gammaproteobacteria, Firmicutes, and Bacteroidetes. The phyla Fusobacteria and Tenericutes were also found for the first time to be predominant in the landfills. The phylum Fusobacteria predominated (51.5 and 48.8%) in two semi-arid landfills, and the phylum Tenericutes dominated (30.6%) at one humid, subtropical landfill. Further, a large number of Pseudomonas was detected in most samples, comprising the dominant group and accounting for 40.9 to 92.4% of the total abundance. Principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis based on OTU abundance showed that the abundant taxa separated the bacterial community. Canonical correlation analysis (CCA) suggested that precipitation and landfilling age significantly impact on the bacterial community structure. The bacterial community function (e.g., cellulolytic bacteria, sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB), sulfate-oxidizing bacteria, and xenobiotic organic compound (XOC)-degrading bacteria) was also diverse, but the pattern is unclear.

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