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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, September 2000, p. 4050-4057, Vol. 66, No. 9
0099-2240/00/$04.00+0
Copyright © 2000, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.

Parallel Processing of Substrate Correlates with Greater Functional Stability in Methanogenic Bioreactor Communities Perturbed by Glucose

Syed A. Hashsham,1,2,* Ana S. Fernandez,2,dagger Sherry L. Dollhopf,2 Frank B. Dazzo,2,3 Robert F. Hickey,1,2,4 James M. Tiedje,2,3 and Craig S. Criddle1,2,Dagger

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering,1 Center for Microbial Ecology,2 and Department of Microbiology,3 Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824, and EFX Systems, Lansing, Michigan 489104

Received 2 February 2000/Accepted 29 May 2000

Parallel processing is more stable than serial processing in many areas that employ interconnected activities. This hypothesis was tested for microbial community function using two quadruplicate sets of methanogenic communities, each set having substantially different populations. The two communities were maintained at a mean cell residence time of 16 days and a mean glucose loading rate of 0.34 g/liter-day in variable-volume reactors. To test stability to perturbation, they were subjected to an instantaneous glucose pulse that resulted in a 6.8-g/liter reactor concentration. The pattern of accumulated products in response to the perturbation was analyzed for various measures of functional stability, including resistance, resilience, and reactivity for each product. A new stability parameter, "moment of amplification envelope," was used to compare the soluble compound stability. These parameters indicated that the communities with predominantly parallel substrate processing were functionally more stable in response to the perturbation than the communities with predominantly serial substrate processing. The data also indicated that there was good replication of function under perturbed conditions; the degrees of replication were 0.79 and 0.83 for the two test communities.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Michigan State University, A-126 Engineering Research Complex, E. Lansing, MI 48824. Phone: (517) 355-8241. Fax: (517) 355-0250. E-mail: hashsham{at}egr.msu.edu.

dagger Present address: Cátedra de Microbiología, Facultad de Química, Montevideo, Uruguay.

Dagger Present address: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305.

Applied and Environmental Microbiology, September 2000, p. 4050-4057, Vol. 66, No. 9
0099-2240/00/$04.00+0
Copyright © 2000, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.


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