Aerobic denitrifying bacterial community with low C/N ratio remove nitrate from micro-polluted water: Metagenomics unravels denitrification pathways

Abstract

The efficient nitrogen removal from micro-polluted source water is an international challenge to be solved urgently. However, the inner denitrification mechanism of native aerobic denitrifying bacterial communities in response to carbon scarcity remains relatively unclear. Here, the bacterial community XT6, screened from an oligotrophic reservoir, exhibited aerobic denitrifying capacity under low-carbon environments. Up to 76.79–81.64 % of total organic carbon (TOC) and 51.48–67.60 % of NO3−-N were removed by XT6 within 48 h at C/N ratios of 2.0–3.0. Additionally, the nitrogen balance experiments further manifested that 26.27–38.13 % of NO3−-N was lost in gaseous form. As the C/N ratio decreased, XT6 tended to generate more extracellular polymeric substances (EPS), with the tightly bound EPS showing the largest increase. Pseudomonas and Variovorax were quite abundant in XT6, constituting 59.69 % and 28.65 % of the total sequences, respectively. Furthermore, metagenomics analysis evidenced that XT6 removed TOC and nitrate mainly through the tricarboxylic acid cycle and aerobic denitrification. Overall, the abovementioned results provide a deeper understanding of the nitrogen metabolic pathways of indigenous aerobic denitrifying bacterial communities with low C/N ratios and offer useful guidance for controlling nitrogen pollution in oligotrophic ecosystems.