Abstract
Drinking water reservoir plays a vital role in the security of urban water supply, yet little is known about microbial community diversity harbored in the sediment of this oligotrophic freshwater environmental ecosystem. In the present study, integrating community level physiological profiles (CLPPs), nested polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) and clone sequence technologies, we examined the sediment urease and protease activities, bacterial community functional diversity, genetic diversity of bacterial and fungal communities in sediments from six sampling sites of Zhou cun drinking water reservoir, eastern China. The results showed that sediment urease activity was markedly distinct along the sites, ranged from 2.48 to 11.81 mg NH3-N/(g·24h). The highest average well color development (AWCD) was found in site C, indicating the highest metabolic activity of heterotrophic bacterial community. Principal component analysis (PCA) revealed tremendous differences in the functional (metabolic) diversity patterns of the sediment bacterial communities from different sites. Meanwhile, DGGE fingerprints also indicated spatial changes of genetic diversity of sediment bacterial and fungal communities. The sequence BLAST analysis of all the sediment samples found that Comamonas sp. was the dominant bacterial species harbored in site A. Alternaria alternate, Allomyces macrogynus and Rhizophydium sp. were most commonly detected fungal species in sediments of the Zhou cun drinking water reservoir. The results from this work provide new insights about the heterogeneity of sediment microbial community metabolic activity and genetic diversity in the oligotrophic drinking water reservoir.
Highlights
In freshwater ecosystems, microbial communities harbored in the sediment play a pivotal role in biogeochemical cycling due to their involvement in transformation of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and sulphur (S), organic matter demineralization and biochemical degradation [1,2,3]
Drinking water reservoir is considerably different from these aquatic environmental ecosystems with distinguishing hydrological regime [14] and a significant part of the drinking water reservoir is characterized by poor nutrient flux to shape the particular microbial community structure
The specific objectives of this study were to (1) determine the sediment urease and protease activities, and (2) evaluate the sediment bacterial community functional diversity and genetic diversity of bacterial and fungal communities from each six sampling sites located in the Zhou cun reservoir, eastern China
Summary
Microbial communities harbored in the sediment play a pivotal role in biogeochemical cycling due to their involvement in transformation of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and sulphur (S), organic matter demineralization and biochemical degradation [1,2,3]. Numerous studies have been performed to determine the bacterial communities living in the sediments of various freshwater habitats, including eutrophic lake [6], athalassohaline lake [7,8], suboxic freshwater pond [9], ephemeral stream [10,11], spring [12] and intertidal wetland [13]. Those previous studies suggested that different freshwater environmental conditions harbored dramatically distinct microbial community composition. The metabolic and genetic characteristics of sediment microbial community in the oligotrophic drinking water reservoir are not comprehensively understood
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