Impact of long-term industrial contamination on the bacterial communities in urban river sediments

Lei Zhang,Jing Li,Wenxuan Lu,Demei Tu,Xingchen Li

doi:10.1186/s12866-020-01937-x

Lei Zhang, Jing Li + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.1186/s12866-020-01937-x

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Abstract

BackgroundThe contamination of the aquatic environment of urban rivers with industrial wastewater has affected the abiotic conditions and biological activities of the trophic levels of the ecosystem, particularly sediments. However, most current research about microorganism in urban aquatic environments has focused on indicator bacteria related to feces and organic pollution. Meanwhile, they ignored the interactions among microorganisms. To deeply understand the impact of industrial contamination on microbial community, we study the bacterial community structure and diversity in river sediments under the influence of different types of industrial pollution by Illumina MiSeq high-throughput sequencing technology and conduct a more detailed analysis of microbial community structure through co-occurrence networks.ResultsThe overall community composition and abundance of individual bacterial groups differed between samples. In addition, redundancy analysis indicated that the structure of the bacterial community in river sediments was influenced by a variety of environmental factors. TN, TP, TOC and metals (Cu, Zn and Cd) were the most important driving factors that determined the bacterial community in urban river sediments (P < 0.01). According to PICRUSt analysis, the bacterial communities in different locations had similar overall functional profiles. It is worth noting that the 15 functional genes related to xenobiotics biodegradation and metabolism were the most abundant in the same location. The non-random assembly patterns of bacterial composition in different types of industrially polluted sediments were determined by a co-occurrence network. Environmental conditions resulting from different industrial pollutants may play an important role in determining their co-occurrence patterns of these bacterial taxa. Among them, the bacterial taxa involved in carbon and nitrogen cycles in module I were relatively abundant, and the bacterial taxa in module II were involved in the repair of metal pollution.ConclusionsOur data indicate that long-term potential interactions between different types of industrial pollution and taxa collectively affect the structure of the bacterial community in urban river sediments.

Highlights

The contamination of the aquatic environment of urban rivers with industrial wastewater has affected the abiotic conditions and biological activities of the trophic levels of the ecosystem, sediments
operational taxonomic units (OTUs) were grouped at the 97% cutoff, and diversity indexes and richness estimates were calculated for each sediment sample (Table S3)
The sediment bacterial communities were dominated by Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Chloroflexi, Acidobacteria, Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes (Fig. 3 (b))

Summary

Introduction

The contamination of the aquatic environment of urban rivers with industrial wastewater has affected the abiotic conditions and biological activities of the trophic levels of the ecosystem, sediments. Most current research about microorganism in urban aquatic environments has focused on indicator bacteria related to feces and organic pollution. Exceeding a certain content of organic and inorganic contaminants in industrial wastewater will have negative consequences for aquatic ecosystems [4,5,6] and pose significant health risks for water users [2]. Refractory organics and heavy metals released from industrial wastewater can cause long-term problems

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