COVID-19 wastewater based epidemiology: long-term monitoring of 10 WWTP in France reveals the importance of the sampling context.

SARS-CoV-2 wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) has been advanced as a relevant indicator of distribution of COVID-19 in communities, supporting classical testing and tracing epidemiological approaches. An extensive sampling campaign, including ten municipal wastewater treatment plants, has been conducted in different cities of France over a 20-week period, encompassing the second peak of COVID-19 outbreak in France. A well-recognised ultrafiltration - RNA extraction - RT-qPCR protocol was used and qualified, showing 5.

Similar Methanogenic Shift but Divergent Syntrophic Partners in Anaerobic Digesters Exposed to Direct versus Successive Ammonium Additions.

During anaerobic digestion (AD) of protein-rich wastewater, ammonium (NH) is released by amino acid degradation. High NH concentrations disturb the AD microbiome balance, leading to process impairments. The sensitivity of the AD microbiome to NH and the inhibition threshold depend on multiple parameters, especially the previous microbial acclimation to ammonium stress.

Anaerobic lignocellulolytic microbial consortium derived from termite gut: enrichment, lignocellulose degradation and community dynamics.

Background: Lignocellulose is the most abundant renewable carbon resource that can be used for biofuels and commodity chemicals production. The ability of complex microbial communities present in natural environments that are specialized in biomass deconstruction can be exploited to develop lignocellulose bioconversion processes. Termites are among the most abundant insects on earth and play an important role in lignocellulose decomposition.

Uncovering the Potential of Termite Gut Microbiome for Lignocellulose Bioconversion in Anaerobic Batch Bioreactors.

Termites are xylophages, being able to digest a wide variety of lignocellulosic biomass including wood with high lignin content. This ability to feed on recalcitrant plant material is the result of complex symbiotic relationships, which involve termite-specific gut microbiomes. Therefore, these represent a potential source of microorganisms for the bioconversion of lignocellulose in bioprocesses targeting the production of carboxylates.

Ecofriendly lignocellulose pretreatment to enhance the carboxylate production of a rumen-derived microbial consortium.

Innovative dry chemo- and chemo-mechanical pretreatments form an interesting approach for modifying the native physico-chemical composition of lignocellulose facilitating its microbial conversion to carboxylates. Here, the impact of four dry-pretreatment conditions on the microbial transformation of wheat straw was assessed: milling to 2mm and 100µm, and NaOH chemical impregnation at high substrate concentrations combined with milling at 2mm and 100µm. Pretreatment effect was assessed in the light of substrate structure and composition, its impact on the acidogenic potential and the major enzyme activities of a rumen-derived microbial consortium RWS.

CAZyChip: dynamic assessment of exploration of glycoside hydrolases in microbial ecosystems.

Background: Microorganisms constitute a reservoir of enzymes involved in environmental carbon cycling and degradation of plant polysaccharides through their production of a vast variety of Glycoside Hydrolases (GH). The CAZyChip was developed to allow a rapid characterization at transcriptomic level of these GHs and to identify enzymes acting on hydrolysis of polysaccharides or glycans.

Results: This DNA biochip contains the signature of 55,220 bacterial GHs available in the CAZy database.

Efficient anaerobic transformation of raw wheat straw by a robust cow rumen-derived microbial consortium.

A rumen-derived microbial consortium was enriched on raw wheat straw as sole carbon source in a sequential batch-reactor (SBR) process under strict mesophilic anaerobic conditions. After five cycles of enrichment the procedure enabled to select a stable and efficient lignocellulolytic microbial consortium, mainly constituted by members of Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes phyla. The enriched community, designed rumen-wheat straw-derived consortium (RWS) efficiently hydrolyzed lignocellulosic biomass, degrading 55.