A comprehensive assessment of fungi in urban sewer biofilms: Community structure, environmental factors, and symbiosis patterns

• DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.150728
• Publication Date: 2021-10-02T08:53:13Z
• Authors: Bo Ren; Xuan Shi; Yulei Chi; Tong Ren; Xin Jin; Xiaochang C. Wang; Pengkang Jin
• Keywords: 0303 health sciences; 03 medical and health sciences; Biofilms; 11. Sustainability; Fungi; Symbiosis; Ecosystem; 6. Clean water; Mycobiome

Sewers are important parts of wastewater treatment facilities and the fungal microbial communities therein make large contributions to the biotransformation of wastewater. Therefore, this experiment constructed an experimental sewer system and characterized the fungal microbial communities using ITS high-throughput sequencing technology in combination with network structure analysis and statistical correlation analysis methods. The results demonstrated that the overall diversity of the fungal communities gradually increased as growth phases progressed, but the dominant groups differed significantly among phases. In the early growth phase (RS1) the dominant genera were Apiotrichum and Inocybe, with abundances of 34% and 14%, respectively, while the middle and late growth phases (RS2 and RS3) were dominated by Candida, with a relative abundance of 47%-66%. CCA and correlation analysis showed that the fungal communities diversity from the artificial sewers had significant positive correlations with COD (r2 = 0.44, p < 0.05) and NH4+ (r2 = 0.64, p < 0.05) and that environmental factors significantly influenced the abundances of Fusarium and Aspergillus. Network analysis revealed differences in the fungal groups representing key nodes during different periods. Candida, Trichosporon, Fusarium, and Aspergillus played important roles in the microbial ecosystem of the simulated sewer systems. This study provides data-supported insight into the bacterial-fungal interaction mechanisms and associated pollutant biodegradation technologies in sewers.