Profiling of bacterial communities grown in activated sludge of pulp paper mill treatment system. Pulp-Paper Sludge

The current study involved the collection of activated sludge from the effluent treatment plant of a pulp paper mill. Bacterial communities within the sludge were analyzed using high-throughput sequencing, specifically targeting the hypervariable region of the 16S rRNA genes through the Illumina MiSeq platform. A total of 2,520 operational taxonomic units (OTU) were identified from 12,4376 high-quality sequence reads. Taxonomic analysis revealed that Proteobacteria was the most abundant phylum in the sludge, comprising 44.54% of the total bacterial sequences. Other predominant phyla included Bacteroidetes (13.27%), Actinobacteria (8.81%), Planctomycetes (6.23%), Chloroflexi (5.82%), Actinobacteria (5.24%), and Verrucomicrobia (4.1%). This research offers valuable insights into microbial community dynamics in wastewater treatment processes and identifies their functional role in a chlorolignin waste-polluted environment.