Abstract
Quorum sensing (QS) plays an important role in microbial aggregation control. Recently, the optimization of biological waste treatment systems by QS regulation gained an increasing attention. The effects of QS regulation on treatment performances and biofilm were frequently investigated. To understand the state of art of QS regulation, this review summarizes the methods of QS enhancement and QS inhibition in biological waste treatment systems. Typical QS enhancement methods include adding exogenous QS molecules, adding QS accelerants and cultivating QS bacteria, while typical QS inhibition methods include additions of quorum quenching (QQ) bacteria, QS-degrading enzymes, QS-degrading oxidants, and QS inhibitors. The specific improvements after applying these QS regulation methods in different treatment systems are concluded. In addition, the effects of QS regulation methods on biofilm in biological waste treatment systems are reviewed in terms of biofilm formation, extracellular polymeric substances production, microbial viability, and microbial community. In the end, the knowledge gaps in current researches are analyzed, and the requirements for future study are suggested.
Highlights
The finding of quorum sensing (QS) has provided a new idea to regulate microbial growth (Sivasankar et al, 2019), and an increasing number of studies have been carried out✉ Corresponding authorFront
Most of the reviews focused on the effects of QS regulation on the system performance, while only a few considered the effects on biofilm formation from the microbiology perspective (Huang et al, 2016; Chen et al, 2018)
Significant decreases in the relative abundance of Pseudorhodoferax and Thiothrix as the dominant bacteria were found in an sequencing biofilm batch reactor (SBBR) with the adding acylhomoserine lactones (AHLs) and cultivating AHLproducing strains, respectively, and the growth of Paracoccus was inhibited in two QS-enhanced SBBRs (Hu et al, 2016a; Zhang et al, 2020)
Summary
The finding of quorum sensing (QS) has provided a new idea to regulate microbial growth (Sivasankar et al, 2019), and an increasing number of studies have been carried out. There are quite a few review articles about QS regulation in biological waste treatment systems in the literatures, covering different aspects and topics. Most of these reviews are on the roles of QS regulation and its distinctive performances in biological wastewater treatment systems (Maddela et al, 2019). The reviews in the literature presented a comprehensive understanding on the development of QS regulation for wastewater treatment, there are still some questions to be answered: 1) What are the specific methods to achieve QS enhancement and inhibition in biological waste treatment systems? We summarized the methods of QS regulation in biological waste treatment systems. The effects of QS regulation on biofilm in terms of biofilm formation, extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) production, and microbial viability and community were reviewed
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