Bacterial communities of biofilms growing on artificial substrates were examined at two time periods (7 and 14 days) and two locations (lentic and lotic areas) in a hypereutrophic urban river of eastern China. Previous studies in this river network indicated that variations of microbial communities were the major factor affecting the distribution of antibiotic resistant genes highlighting the importance of understanding controls of microbial communities. Bacterial communities associated with biofilms were determined using epifluorescence microscopy and high-throughput sequencing. Results showed that sampling time and site had significant effects on the abundances of surface-associated bacteria. No significant differences were found in the number of surface-associated bacteria between two substrate types (filament vs. slide). Sequencing revealed microbial communities attached to artificial substrates in a hypereutrophic urban river were composed of 80,375 OTUs, and distributed in 47 phyla. Proteobacteria and Cyanobacteria/Chloroplast were the two dominant phyla, followed by Planctomycetes, Actinobacteria, Verrucomicrobia, Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes. Taxonomic composition showed ammonia-oxidizing microorganisms, fecal indicator bacteria and pathogens enriched in attached microbial communities, especially the ammonia-oxidizing Nitrosomonas bacteria. These results indicated that there were significant temporal and intra-river heterogeneity of attached microbial community structure, but no significant difference in community composition was detected between the two substrate types.

Biofilms play an important role in degradation, transformation and assimilation of anthropogenic pollutants in aquatic ecosystems. In this study, we assembled a tubular bioreactor containing a biofilm substrate and aeration device, which was introduced into mesocosms to explore the effects of bioreactor on physicochemical and microbial characteristics of a hypereutrophic urban river. The biofilm bioreactor greatly improved water quality, especially by decreasing dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) concentrations, suggesting that biofilms were the major sites of nitrification and denitrification with an oxygen concentration gradient. The biofilm bioreactor increased the abundance of planktonic bacteria, whereas diversity of the planktonic microbial community decreased. Sequencing revealed that Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Planctomycetes, and Actinobacteria were the four predominant phyla in the planktonic microbial community, and the presence of the biofilm bioreactor increased the relative abundance of Proteobacteria. Variations in microbial communities were most strongly affected by the presence of the biofilm bioreactor, as indicated by principal component analysis (PCA) and redundancy analysis (RDA). This study provides valuable insights into changes in ecological characteristics associated with self-purification processes in hypereutrophic urban rivers, and may be of important for the application of biofilm bioreactor in natural urban river.