Application of metaproteomics in study of activated sludge

Abstract

Activated sludge is widely used as an effective and stable method in wastewater treatment. However a deep insight into the microbial communities and components of activated sludge is still a great challenge. The rapidly growing number of metagenomic sequences together with revolutionary advances in bioinformatics and protein analyses have opened completely new horizons to investigate the molecular basis of such complex communities. Metaproteomics, a new approach for studying functional microbial ecology, is mainly applied for macroscopical and high-throughput analysis of total proteins expressed by a specific microbial community. The research approach of metaproteomic is similar to the classical approach in proteomic analysis, including protein extraction and purification, separation and identification. Currently, activated sludge metaproteomics has made a great progress in research on enhanced biological phosphorus removal sludge, activated sludge extracellular polymeric substances and comparison of wastewater treatment processes. However, compared with the rapid development in bio-medical field, the research on activated sludge by metaproteomics is still in its infancy. The lack of a common effective protein extraction method and the imperfection of environmental microbial database became the biggest obstacle of the the application of metaproteomics in studies of activated sludge. This review summarizes the recent research advances both domestic and overseas, and compares the different methods of activated sludge metaproteomics. With the development of the new instruments and corresponding technologies, activated sludge metaproteomics will show its great advantages in study on the pollutant biodegradation mechanism and the proteins function identification.