The use of fatty acid methyl esters as biomarkers to determine aerobic, facultatively aerobic and anaerobic communities in wastewater treatment systems

Abstract

The use of fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) as biomarkers to identify groups of microorganisms was studied. A database was constructed using previously published results that identify FAME biomarkers for aerobic, anaerobic and facultatively aerobic bacteria. FAME profiles obtained from pure cultures were utilized to confirm the predicted presence of biomarkers. Principal component analysis demonstrated that the FAME profiles can be used to determine the incidence of these bacterial groups. The presence of aerobic, anaerobic and facultatively aerobic bacteria in the communities, in four bioreactors being used to treat different wastewaters, was investigated by applying FAME biomarkers.

Enhancement of phenol degradation by soil bioaugmentation with Pseudomonas sp. JS150

“…Similarly, we did not observe significant changes in the humic material content during phenol dissipation in contaminated sterile MF and WM soils inoculated with Pseudomonas stutzeri (Mrozik et al 2008). In many environmental studies, analysis of FAME profiles has been used to determine changes in microbial populations and their activity in soil (Kozdró j and van Elsas 2001), wastewater treatment (Quezada et al 2007) and sediments (Dunn et al 2008). Moreover, alterations in FAME patterns obtained directly from soil may indicate the response of microbial communities to natural and antropogenic stress (Kozdró j 2000; Islam et al 2009).…”

“…In many environmental studies, analysis of FAME profiles has been used to determine changes in microbial populations and their activity in soil (Kozdrój and van Elsas 2001), wastewater treatment (Quezada et al. 2007) and sediments (Dunn et al.…”

Respiration and ecological niche influence bacterial membrane lipid compositions

“…PCA also served as a useful statistical method to determine the strengths of lipid profiles to identify phylum‐level relationships between lipid profiles from highly diverse species. Although chemotaxonomically significant lipids, such as short‐branched acyl chains, hydroxylated or methylated FA and GL (SDQG and AGL), PG, PC were shown to be useful for distinguishing taxa in mixed microbial communities (Quezada et al ., ; Zhang et al ., ), their low abundance and inconsistent distribution in this environmentally diverse lipid data set likely caused the diminished variance explainable by PCA in this study.…”

“…The proportion of total explained variance within the first three principle components for the analysis of the entire FA and PL data sets was 41.2% and 48.5%, respectively, indicating that only a portion of variance in lipid profiles could be accounted for by PCA. Initial PCA of the entire FA and PL data sets included most of the chemotaxonomically significant lipid variables [short‐branched acyl chains, hydroxylated or methylated FA (Quezada et al ., ) and GL (SDQG and AGL), PG, PC (Brandsma et al ., )], but reduced the total proportion of explained lipid variance within the first three principle components to 10–25% (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1462-2920.12637/suppinfo). Taxonomic associations between related species in scores plots were also noticeably reduced compared with PCA restricted to major FA and PL (Fig.…”

Biogeochemical Stratification and Carbonate Dissolution-Precipitation in Hypersaline Microbial Mats (Salt Pond, San Salvador, The Bahamas)

“…FAMEs can be used to distinguish aerobic versus anaerobic microbial communities. Aerobic microbial communities tend to maintain saturated and hydroxyl fatty acids, whereas anaerobic communities maintain unsaturated and branched fatty acids (Quezada et al 2007). In Salt Pond, the saturated fatty acid, tetratdecanoic acid (or myristic acid, c:14), was noted in greater amounts in upper core layers where oxic conditions prevailed, than in lower core portions.…”