Metagenomic Analysis of Bacterial Communities from a Nitrification–Denitrification Treatment of Landfill Leachates

Abstract The efficiency of the biological removal of carbon and nitrogen from leachates is determined by the activity of microbial populations present in biological reactors. In this work, a complete characterization of bacterial communities revealed by personal genome machine sequencing (PGM) has been carried out from different points of a nitrification–denitrification process operated in an urban landfill. The leachate fed to the treatment is a mixture of young leachate, old leachate, and effluent from an anaerobic digestion process, in a volume ratio of 1:0.9:0.12, respectively. The anoxic and oxic reactors are followed by an ultrafiltration step. Samples are taken from different points of the process. Results reveal the microbial diversity of the samples, which include detection of minority populations that are difficult to explore by other methods. Bacteria belonging to Bacteroidetes and Proteobacteria are dominant in all the samples analyzed. Proteobacteria represents more than 50% of the total population in all cases. Samples taken after the biological treatment show a significant reduction in the relative abundance of Firmicutes, Tenericutes, and Lentisphaerae phyla in comparation with the initial leachate. The relative abundance of the classes is also studied and the most abundant in the samples are β‐Proteobacteria and Flavobacteria.