Profiling Bacterial Diversity and Potential Pathogens in Wastewater Treatment Plants Using High-Throughput Sequencing Analysis

Abstract

Next-generation sequencing provides new insights into the diversity and structure of bacterial communities, as well as the fate of pathogens in wastewater treatment systems. In this study, the bacterial community structure and the presence of pathogenic bacteria in three wastewater treatment plants across Gauteng province in South Africa were studied. The physicochemical results indicated that the quality of wastewater varies considerably from one plant to the others. Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Firmicutes, and Chloroflexi were the dominant phyla across the three wastewater treatment plants, while Alphaproteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Bacilli, and Clostridia were the dominant classes. The dominant bacterial functions were highly associated with carbohydrate, energy, and amino acid metabolism. In addition, potential pathogenic bacterial members identified from the influent/effluent samples included Roseomonas, Bacillus, Pseudomonas, Clostridium, Mycobacterium, Methylobacterium, and Aeromonas. The results of linear discriminant analysis (LDA) effect size analysis also confirmed that these bacterial pathogens were significantly abundant in the wastewater treatment systems. Further, the results of this study highlighted that the presence of bacterial pathogens in treated effluent pose a potential contamination risk, transmitted through soil, agriculture, water, or sediments. There is thus a need for continuous monitoring of potential pathogens in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in order to minimize public health risk.

Insights into the microbial diversity and structure in a full-scale municipal wastewater treatment plant with particular regard to Archaea

“…However, in the case of diversity indices for Archaea their values were similar for samples taken both upstream and downstream the effluent discharge point. According to the indices values the investigated samples had high microbial diversity compared with the literature data [ 19 , 20 ].…”

“…The different values of indices detected could be caused by the environmental variables such as temperature, dissolved oxygen, conductivity, pH, HRT, SRT, influent BOD and influent total nitrogen [ 19 – 21 ]. While, the treated wastewater affected the eubacterial and archaeal compositions in the receiving water in lesser extent.…”

“…As reported in the literature, the phylum Proteobacteria dominated in municipal WWTPs followed by other groups such as Bacteroidetes , Acinobacteria , Firmicutes but the proportion between the groups depends on many factors such as type of sewage treatment plants, technology used, composition of influent, hydraulic configuration, etc . [ 2 , 19 , 21 – 23 ]. As presented by Yang et al .…”

Bioremediation of Historically Chlorimuron-Ethyl-Contaminated Soil by Co-Culture Chlorimuron-Ethyl-Degrading Bacteria Combined with the Spent Mushroom Substrate

“…Soil samples were taken at specific time intervals (10,20,30,40,50, 60, 70 and 80 d) for chlorimuron-ethyl residue quantification. A high-throughput sequencing method (MiSeq platform) was used by Sangon Biotech Co., Ltd. (Shanghai, China) to examine the bacterial relative abundance and diversity in the samples at 80 days and 180 days [22,23].…”

Distribution and Public Health Significance of Vibrio Pathogens Recovered from Selected Treated Effluents in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa

“…Despite the incredible efforts of international bodies and water management organizations, such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and Water Research Commission (WRC), to upgrade and maintain water treatment standards, the prevalence of waterborne infections remains evident in developing countries [5]. Furthermore, the occurrence of potentially pathogenic microbes in effluents from wastewater treatment plant and adjacent river water indicates that the wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are not effective in eradicating all pathogens as expected [6]. Hence, treatment plants have been implicated in the distribution of enteric pathogens, such as the main 12 known pathogenic Vibrio species to human, in contaminating freshwater ecosystem [7,8].…”