454-pyrosequencing technology was employed to investigate the microbial communities from anaerobic fluidized bed reactor treating laundry wastewater.

In this study, 454-pyrosequencing technology was employed to investigate the microbial communities from anaerobic fluidized bed reactor treating laundry wastewater. Biomass from the support material (S) and phase separator (PS) were analysed in two stages, with (S-I and PS-I) and without sucrose (S-II and PS-II) as co-substrate. The pyrosequencing generated in total 18,523 sequences of the 16S rRNA representing from 4 samples that widely represented the diversity of the microbial communities. Among them 17 phyla, 30 classes, 49 orders, 64 families and 92 genera of Bacteria. While Proteobacteria followed by Bacteroidetes was found to be the dominant phylum in the samples from the stage I (with sucrose), in samples from the stage II (without sucrose) were Proteobacteria and Gemmatimonadetes. The absence of sucrose in the last stage did not affect the Shannon-Weiner and Simpson indices. Regarding the Pielou index the most heterogeneous samples in terms of microbial distribution was PS-I, followed by S-I. The differences found between the samples indicated that the treatment process likely had effects on the microbial structure. Gemmatimonas, Desulfobulbus and Zoogloea were the most abundante genus related with surfactants degradation.