Aerobic denitrifying bacterial-fungal consortium mediating nitrate removal: Dynamics, network patterns and interactions

Xiaotian Zuo; Wei Xu; Shiping Wei; Shuangcheng Jiang; Yu Luo; Minghuang Ling; Kai Zhang; Yuanhao Gao; Zhichao Wang; Jiege Hu; Hans-Peter Grossart; Zhuhua Luo

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2023.106824

Aerobic denitrifying bacterial-fungal consortium mediating nitrate removal: Dynamics, network patterns and interactions

iScience. 2023 May 6;26(6):106824. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.106824. eCollection 2023 Jun 16.

Authors

Xiaotian Zuo^{1

2}, Wei Xu¹, Shiping Wei², Shuangcheng Jiang³, Yu Luo¹, Minghuang Ling¹, Kai Zhang¹, Yuanhao Gao¹, Zhichao Wang¹, Jiege Hu¹, Hans-Peter Grossart^{4

5}, Zhuhua Luo^{1

6

7

8}

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Marine Biogenetic Resources, Third Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources, Xiamen 361005, China.
² School of Marine Sciences, China University of Geosciences, Beijing 100083, China.
³ Fisheries Research Institute of Fujian, Key Laboratory of Cultivation and High-value Utilization of Marine Organisms in Fujian Province, Xiamen 361013, China.
⁴ Department of Experimental Limnology, Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Stechlin 16775, Germany.
⁵ Institute of Biochemistry and Biology, Postdam University, Potsdam 14469, Germany.
⁶ School of Marine Sciences, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing 210044, China.
⁷ Marine Biology College, Xiamen Ocean Vocational College, Xiamen 361012, China.
⁸ Co-Innovation Center of Jiangsu Marine Bioindustry Technology, Jiangsu Ocean University, Lianyungang 222005, China.

Abstract

In recent years, nitrogen removal by mixed microbial cultures has received increasing attention owing to cooperative metabolism. A natural bacterial-fungal consortium was isolated from mariculture, which exhibited an excellent aerobic denitrification capacity. Under aerobic conditions, nitrate removal and denitrification efficiencies were up to 100% and 44.27%, respectively. High-throughput sequencing and network analysis suggested that aerobic denitrification was potentially driven by the co-occurrence of the following bacterial and fungal genera: Vibrio, Fusarium, Gibberella, Meyerozyma, Exophiala and Pseudoalteromonas, with the dominance of Vibrio and Fusarium in bacterial and fungal communities, respectively. In addition, the isolated consortium had a high steady aerobic denitrification performance in our sub-culturing experiments. Our results provide new insights on the dynamics, network patterns and interactions of aerobic denitrifying microbial consortia with a high potential for new biotechnology applications.

Keywords: Agricultural cooperative; Applied sciences; Microbiology.