Looking beyond the biopolymers: DNA-based analysis of polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA)-producing bacteria.. SBR_D

Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) are biopolymers produced by taxonomically various bacteria. Because their biodegradability, PHAs have attracted high biotechnological interest. The European-funded ResUrbis project (https://www.resurbis.eu/) was aimed to the conversion of renewable resources such as urban biowaste into PHA biopolymers by means of bacterial mixed culture subjected to consecutive periods of substrate excess (feast) and limitation (famine) in sequencing batch reactor (SBR; Valentino et al., 2017). Here, we have focused on DNA-based tools for a cost-effective analysis in biohazard identification as it is expected to provide important information for conducting the biological risk assessment (European Directive 2000/54/EC). We carried out a Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) study on PHA-producing bacterial samples isolated from an SBR of the PHA production at pilot-scale located in Treviso, Italy. Based on the DNA sequence similarity, we predicted bacterial features including those involved in the metabolism of fatty acids and PHA that may also be of interest for the optimation of biopolymer composition. The NGS project was financially supported by INAIL-DIT, in PAR 2016-2018.