Development of a Novel Strategy to Cultivate Enhanced Biological Phosphorus Removal (EBPR) Microorganisms

This study aimed at developing a new strategy to promote the enhanced biological phosphorus removal (EBPR) metabolism in a semi-high-throughput mode and that could potentially enable the isolation of Candidatus Accumulibacter phosphatis or any other EBPR organisms. To simulate this environment in a semi-high-throughput approach, we developed a palm size reactor, termed Small-Scale Manual-Operation EBPR reactor (SSMO-EBPR). The usefulness and applicability of the SSMO-EBPR as an EBPR system was successfully verified by showing consistent phosphorus cycling with activated sludge enriched in Cand. A. phosphatis. Automatic ribosomal intergenic spacer analysis and clone-sequencing demonstrated that Cand. A. phosphatis was retained in the reactors at periodicities of anaerobic/aerobic cycles of 1, 2, 4, 6, and 10 days. The characteristics of the SSMO-EBPR will facilitate the design of novel experiments to enhance knowledge on EBPR metabolism by allowing performing a large number of experiments in a short time frame with small footprint reactors.