Molecular Biology Techniques Applied to the Study of Microbial Diversity of Wastewater Treatment Systems

Abstract

In environmental biotechnology, biological wastewater treatment processes have been applied for more than a century in order to minimize the impact of anthropogenic activity on the environment. These processes harbor a great variety of microorganisms, within which bacteria are the most important given their crucial role in the biodegradation of pollutants. Despite the importance of biological processes for the treatment of wastewaters, very limited information on the microbial ecology of these systems was available until a few years ago. The introduction of different culture-independent molecular techniques in the past decade has made it possible to identify the most important microorganisms in the biological wastewater treatment systems, providing a better understanding of their functioning . The purpose of this chapter is to describe the principles and concepts of molecular biology techniques employed for the study of the microbial diversity of bioreactors and discuss how the information gained from such molecular approaches can be used to improve the performance of these engineered systems.