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Aeration promotes Proteobacteria over Firmicutes in macerated food waste, resulting in superior anaerobic digestion efficiency.

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Bibliographic Details
Title: Aeration promotes Proteobacteria over Firmicutes in macerated food waste, resulting in superior anaerobic digestion efficiency.
Authors: Tang, Linjie1 (AUTHOR), Manefield, Mike1 (AUTHOR)
Source: FEMS Microbiology Letters. 2025, Vol. 372, p1-8. 8p.
Subjects: Proteobacteria, Food waste, Gram-positive bacteria, Biogas production, Anaerobic metabolism, Microbial communities, Extracellular enzymes
Abstract: Aeration is a common pretreatment method to enhance biogas production via anaerobic digestion of waste organic feedstocks such as unused food. While impacts on downstream anaerobic digestion have been intensively investigated, the consequence of aeration on the microbial community in food waste has not been characterized. Food waste has a low pH resulting from the dominance of lactic acid bacteria within the Firmicutes phylum. This excludes other phylotypes with a higher potential to hydrolyse complex biopolymers in food waste. In this study, we reveal that aeration of macerated food waste results in a dramatic shift away from Firmicutes towards dominance of Proteobacteria that are better known for extracellular enzyme production. Given that hydrolysis is the rate limiting step in anaerobic digestion, this explains why aeration improves the efficiency of biogas production from food waste. The discovery that Proteobacteria dominate microbial communities in aerated food waste opens up opportunities to manipulate extracellular enzyme production through gene expression mechanisms common among Proteobacteria such as quorum sensing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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Database: Engineering Source
Description
Abstract:Aeration is a common pretreatment method to enhance biogas production via anaerobic digestion of waste organic feedstocks such as unused food. While impacts on downstream anaerobic digestion have been intensively investigated, the consequence of aeration on the microbial community in food waste has not been characterized. Food waste has a low pH resulting from the dominance of lactic acid bacteria within the Firmicutes phylum. This excludes other phylotypes with a higher potential to hydrolyse complex biopolymers in food waste. In this study, we reveal that aeration of macerated food waste results in a dramatic shift away from Firmicutes towards dominance of Proteobacteria that are better known for extracellular enzyme production. Given that hydrolysis is the rate limiting step in anaerobic digestion, this explains why aeration improves the efficiency of biogas production from food waste. The discovery that Proteobacteria dominate microbial communities in aerated food waste opens up opportunities to manipulate extracellular enzyme production through gene expression mechanisms common among Proteobacteria such as quorum sensing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
ISSN:03781097
DOI:10.1093/femsle/fnaf001