Surrey Biofuel Facility Liquid Digestate Genome sequencing and assembly

Syntrophic microbial consortia can contribute significantly to the activity and function of anoxic ecosystems, yet are often too rare to study their in situ physiologies using traditional molecular methods. In order to address this, we describe a technical innovation combining bioorthogonal non-canonical amino acid tagging (BONCAT), stable isotope probing, and metaproteomics to improve the recovery of proteins from active community members and track isotope incorporation. We applied this method to understanding syntrophic metabolisms in a full-scale anaerobic digestion bioenergy facility. To generate a comprehensive protein database for metaproteomics specific to the sampling location, biomass from the liquid digestate was routinely sampled over the course of 12 months. Using both long- and short- read metagenomic sequencing, assembly, and binning workflows, a dereplicated genome bin set was recovered containing 466 high-quality (including 22 circular) and 446 medium-quality draft metagenome assembled genomes (MAGs).