Yan Peihan, Zhu Junge, Ji Qianwei, Hou Gaolin, Liang Guoqiang, Liu Xinchun, Liu Ruyin
College of Resources and Environment, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, No.1 Yanqihu East Rd, Huairou District, Beijing, 101408, China.
CAS Key Laboratory of Microbial Physiological and Metabolic Engineering, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Sci Rep. 2025 May 31;15(1):19165. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-04743-5.
The temporal dynamics of phage-host interactions within full-scale biological wastewater treatment (BWT) plants remain inadequately characterized. Here, we provide an in-depth investigation of viral and bacterial dynamics over a nine-year period in an activated sludge BWT plant, where bleach addition was applied to control sludge foaming. By conducting bioinformatic analyses on 98 metagenomic time-series samples, we reconstructed 3,486 bacterial genomes and 2,435 complete or near-complete viral genomes, which were classified into 361 bacterial and 889 viral clusters, respectively. Our results demonstrate that the primary bleaching event induced significant shifts in both bacterial and viral communities, as well as in virus-host interactions, as evidenced by alterations in bacteria-virus interaction networks and virus-to-host ratio dynamics. Following bleaching, the bacteria-virus network became less interconnected but more compartmentalized. Viral communities mirrored bacterial dynamics, indicating a strong coupling in phage-host interactions. Among the identified virus-host pairs, many exhibited a decelerating rise in viral abundance relative to host abundance, with virus-to-host ratios generally displaying a negative correlation with host abundance. This trend was particularly pronounced in virus-host pairs where viruses harbored integrase genes, indicative of temperate dynamics resembling a "Piggyback-the-Winner" model. Notably, the bleaching intervention appeared to induce a transition from lysogeny to lysis in viruses associated with some foaming-related bacterial species, suggesting a potential virus-involved indirect mechanism by which bleaching mitigates sludge foaming.
在全规模生物废水处理（BWT）厂内，噬菌体与宿主相互作用的时间动态仍未得到充分表征。在此，我们对一座活性污泥BWT厂内九年期间的病毒和细菌动态进行了深入研究，该厂采用添加漂白剂来控制污泥泡沫。通过对98个宏基因组时间序列样本进行生物信息学分析，我们重建了3486个细菌基因组和2435个完整或近乎完整的病毒基因组，它们分别被归类为361个细菌簇和889个病毒簇。我们的结果表明，主要的漂白事件在细菌和病毒群落以及病毒-宿主相互作用方面均引发了显著变化，细菌-病毒相互作用网络和病毒与宿主比例动态的改变证明了这一点。漂白后，细菌-病毒网络的相互连接性降低，但更加分区化。病毒群落反映了细菌动态，表明噬菌体-宿主相互作用中存在强耦合。在鉴定出的病毒-宿主对中，许多对的病毒丰度相对于宿主丰度呈减速上升，病毒与宿主的比例通常与宿主丰度呈负相关。这种趋势在携带整合酶基因的病毒-宿主对中尤为明显，表明其具有类似于“搭乘赢家”模型的温和动态。值得注意的是，漂白干预似乎促使与一些与泡沫相关的细菌物种相关的病毒从溶原状态转变为裂解状态，这表明漂白减轻污泥泡沫的过程中可能存在一种潜在的病毒参与的间接机制。
