Ren Haijing, Wang Rongchang, Ying Luyao, Iyobosa Eheneden, Chen Gaoxiang, Zang Di, Tong Min, Li Enchao, Nerenberg Robert
Institute of Biofilm Technology, Key Laboratory of Yangtze Aquatic Environment (MOE), College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China.
Institute of Biofilm Technology, Key Laboratory of Yangtze Aquatic Environment (MOE), College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China.
Water Res. 2025 Jan 1;268(Pt A):122595. doi: 10.1016/j.watres.2024.122595. Epub 2024 Oct 10.
Antibiotics are frequently detected in wastewater, but often are poorly removed in conventional wastewater treatment processes. Combining microalgal and nitrifying bacterial processes may provide synergistic removal of antibiotics and ammonium. In this research, we studied the removal of the antibiotic sulfamethoxazole (SMX) in two different reactors: a conventional nitrifying bacterial membrane aerated biofilm reactor (bMABR) and algal-bacterial membrane aerated biofilm reactor (abMABR) systems. We investigated the synergistic removal of antibiotics and ammonium, antioxidant activity, microbial communities, antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs), mobile genetic elements (MGEs), and their potential hosts. Our findings show that the abMABR maintained a high sulfamethoxazole (SMX) removal efficiency, with a minimum of 44.6 % and a maximum of 75.8 %, despite SMX inhibition, it maintained a consistent 25.0 % ammonium removal efficiency compared to the bMABR. Through a production of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) with increased proteins/polysaccharides (PN/PS), the abMABR possibly allowed the microalgae-bacteria consortium to protect the bacteria from SMX inactivation. The activity of antioxidant enzymes caused by SMX was reduced by 62.1-98.5 % in the abMABR compared to the bMABR. Metagenomic analysis revealed that the relative abundance of Methylophilus, Pseudoxanthomonas, and Acidovorax in the abMABR exhibited a significant positive correlation with SMX exposure and reduced nitrate concentrations and SMX removal. Sulfonamide ARGs (sul1 and sul2) appeared to be primarily responsible for defense against SMX stress, and Hyphomicrobium and Nitrosomonas were the key carriers of ARGs. This study demonstrated that the abMABR system has great potential for removing SMX and reducing the environmental risks of ARGs.
抗生素在废水中经常被检测到，但在传统的废水处理工艺中往往去除效果不佳。将微藻和硝化细菌工艺相结合可能会协同去除抗生素和铵。在本研究中，我们研究了两种不同反应器中抗生素磺胺甲恶唑（SMX）的去除情况：传统的硝化细菌膜曝气生物膜反应器（bMABR）和藻菌膜曝气生物膜反应器（abMABR）系统。我们研究了抗生素和铵的协同去除、抗氧化活性、微生物群落、抗生素抗性基因（ARGs）、移动遗传元件（MGEs）及其潜在宿主。我们的研究结果表明，尽管受到SMX抑制，abMABR仍保持较高的磺胺甲恶唑（SMX）去除效率，最低为44.6%，最高为75.8%，与bMABR相比，其铵去除效率始终保持在25.0%。通过产生蛋白质/多糖（PN/PS）增加的胞外聚合物（EPS），abMABR可能使微藻-细菌联合体保护细菌免受SMX失活的影响。与bMABR相比，abMABR中由SMX引起的抗氧化酶活性降低了62.1-98.5%。宏基因组分析表明，abMABR中嗜甲基菌属、假黄单胞菌属和嗜酸菌属的相对丰度与SMX暴露、硝酸盐浓度降低和SMX去除呈显著正相关。磺胺类ARGs（sul1和sul2）似乎是抵御SMX胁迫的主要因素，而枝动杆菌属和亚硝化单胞菌属是ARGs的关键载体。本研究表明，abMABR系统在去除SMX和降低ARGs的环境风险方面具有巨大潜力。
