Journal of Microbial & Biochemical Technology

The importance of biodiversity on the functional performance of wastewater treatment plants

International Conference and Summit on Industrial & Pharmaceutical Microbiology

October 17-18, 2016 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Deborah Patsch

EAWAG & ETHZ, Switzerland

Scientific Tracks Abstracts: J Microb Biochem Technol

Abstract:

Microbial communities perform functions that provide crucial services to ecosystems and human society in wastewater they detoxify pollutants and consume environmental nutrients, thus mitigating the potentially deleterious effects of these chemicals on ecosystems and human health. However the role of community composition and biodiversity to perform these functions has not been clearly understood. We are therefore addressing a critical and unresolved ecological question: When are community composition and biodiversity important for the provision of a particular ecosystem function and when are they not? We hypothesize that community composition and biodiversity are more important for rare ecosystem functions than for common ecosystem functions. If an ecosystem function is rare, then differences or changes in community composition could have profound effects on the biotransformation rate of that function. In contrast, if an ecosystem function is common, then differences or changes in community composition are unlikely to have an effect on that function. We addressed this knowledge gap with an extensive study, measuring the kinetics of 95 different ecosystem functions for 35 different wastewater treatment plant communities. We then correlated their performance with their taxonomic and functional biodiversity levels, which were determined through metagenomic and metatranscriptomic approaches.

Biography :

Deborah Patsch has completed her Bachelors in Molecular Biology at the University of Graz, Austria and completed her Master’s studies at Southern Illinois University of Carbondale, USA. She is currently pursuing PhD as a Marie Curie Fellow at ETH Zurich and Eawag where she focuses her research on microbial ecology related topics.

Email: deborah.patsch@eawag.ch