Source Community and Assembly Processes Affect the Efficiency of Microbial Microcystin Degradation on Drinking Water Filtration Membranes

Microbial biofilms in gravity-driven membrane (GDM) filtration systems can efficiently degrade the cyanotoxin microcystin (MC), but it is unclear if this function depends on the presence of MC-producing cyanobacteria in the source water habitat. We assessed the removal of MC from added biomass in GD...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inFrontiers in microbiology Vol. 10; p. 843
Main Authors Silva, Marisa O D, Desmond, Peter, Derlon, Nicolas, Morgenroth, Eberhard, Pernthaler, Jakob
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Switzerland Frontiers Media S.A 18.04.2019
Subjects
biofilm
drinking water
membrane filtration
microbial communities
Microbiology
microcystin
network analysis
membrane filtration
operational taxonomic unit
biofilm
network analysis
drinking water
microbial communities
microcystin
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Summary:Microbial biofilms in gravity-driven membrane (GDM) filtration systems can efficiently degrade the cyanotoxin microcystin (MC), but it is unclear if this function depends on the presence of MC-producing cyanobacteria in the source water habitat. We assessed the removal of MC from added biomass in GDMs fed with water from a lake with regular blooms of toxic cyanobacteria (ExpL) or from a stream without such background (ExpS). While initial MC removal was exclusively due to abiotic processes, significantly higher biological MC removal was observed in ExpL. By contrast, there was no difference in MC degradation capacity between lake and stream bacteria in separately conducted liquid enrichments on pure MC. Co-occurrence network analysis revealed a pronounced modularity of the biofilm communities, with a clear hierarchic distinction according to feed water origin and treatment type. Genotypes in the network modules associated with ExpS had significantly more links to each other, indicating that these biofilms had assembled from a more coherent source community. In turn, signals for stochastic community assembly were stronger in ExpL biofilms. We propose that the less "tightly knit" ExpL biofilm assemblages allowed for the better establishment of facultatively MC degrading bacteria, and thus for higher overall functional efficiency.
Bibliography:Reviewed by: Dariusz Dziga, Jagiellonian University, Poland; Leda Giannuzzi, National University of La Plata, Argentina
Edited by: Rainer Kurmayer, University of Innsbruck, Austria
This article was submitted to Aquatic Microbiology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Microbiology
ISSN:1664-302X
1664-302X
DOI:10.3389/fmicb.2019.00843