Dynamics of Bacteriophages in Biological Nutrient Removing Activated Sludge Processes-correlating Viral Abundance with Performance

Over the past three decades, it has become apparent that viruses are ubiquitious, abundant and ecologically important in the environment. Considering that viruses are the most abundant biological entities on the planet, surprisingly little is known about their identity or diversity. It speculated that they play a critical role in the determining the population dynamics of bacterial ecology within a biosystem. Activated sludge processes have been established to harbor copious diversity of bacterial community. Bacteriophages being predators of bacteria not only thrive well in such biosystems but also control the bacterial diversity. Therefore, directly or indirectly they are linked with the performance of such processes. This study in this direction was an endeavor to examine their abundance and diversity in various activated sludge processes operated under variable operational conditions. Bacteriophages were present in all the processes examined. Phages belonging to seven different families were identified portraying their diversity in the bioreactors.