Microbiome in anaerobic digestion of phenols

The aim of the present work was to investigate the dynamics of microbial community during anaerobic digestion process of phenol and p-cresol. Anaerobic digestion was conducted in batch reactors and microbial community dynamics was analysed. Results showed that active microbial community structure was quite dissimilar in comparison to the total microbial community. Syntrophorhabdus and Bacillus were the dominant active bacterial genera whereas Methanosaeta together with Methanobacterium showed the highest activity in the archaea domain indicating a relevant role of these microorganisms to the anaerobic process.