Municipal Wastewater Microbiome Initiative

Since 2014, GWMC launched the first initiative (Municipal Wastewater Microbiome Initiative) and focused on Activated Sludge Microbiome. From 2014 to 2015, GWMC collected around 1200 activated sludge samples from 269 WWTPs in 23 countries on 6 continents, involving over 110 investigators around the world.

Now, all samples have been analyzed by amplicon sequencing of 16S/ITS/18S rRNA and amoA genes, and representative samples will further be investigated with metagenomic analysis. Very interesting results are comming out. We will soon publish our findings.

To further understand the temporal dynamics of activated sludge microbiome, GWMC carried out one-year weekly sampling of activated sludge in 2015 at 10 wastewater treatment plants in 6 different countries. All samples have been collected with detailed meta-data, and will be analyzed with various high throughput metagenomic technologies.