Metagenomics reveals the microbial community and functional metabolism variation in the partial nitritation-anammox process: From collapse to recovery

Mainstream partial nitritation-anammox (PNA) process easily suffers from performance instability and even reactor collapse in application. Thus, it is of great significance to unveil the characteristic of performance recovery, understand the intrinsic mechanism and then propose operational strategy. In this study, we combined long-term reactor operation, batch tests, and metagenomics to reveal the succession of microbial community and functional metabolism variation from system collapse to recovery. Proper aeration control (0.10-0.25 mg O2/L) was critical for performance recovery. It was also found that Candidatus Brocadia became the dominant flora and its abundance increased from 3.5% to 11.0%. Significant enhancements in carbon metabolism and phospholipid biosynthesis were observed during system recovery, and the genes abundance related to signal transduction was dramatically increased. The up-regulation of sdh and suc genes showed the processes of succinate dehydrogenation and succinyl-CoA synthesis might stimulate the production of amino acids and the synthesis of proteins, thereby possibly improving the activity and abundance of AnAOB, which was conducive to the performance recovery. Moreover, the increase in abundance of hzs and hdh genes suggested the enhancement of the anammox process. Changes in the abundance of key genes involved in nitrogen metabolism indicated that nitrogen removal pathway was more diverse after system recovery. The achievement of performance recovery was driven by anammox, nitrification and denitrification coupled with dissimilatory nitrate reduction to ammonium. These results provide deeper insights into the recovery mechanism of PNA system and also provide a potential regulation strategy for the stable operation of the mainstream PNA process.