Five blueberry anthocyanins and their antioxidant, hypoglycemic, and hypolipidemic effects in vitro.

The dual epidemic of obesity and diabetes mellitus is becoming an important worldwide public health issue. "Diabesity" is the term used to describe the combined detrimental health effects of both diabetes mellitus and obesity/overweight. Currently, food-derived bioactive compounds are suggested to alleviate diabesity. Blueberries are rich in bioactive anthocyanins, which are associated with contributing to preventing obesity and diabetes mellitus. However, the accurate active compounds and the underlying mechanism are still unclear. The objective of this study was to investigate the beneficial effects of blueberry anthocyanin on diabesity. In total, five anthocyanins (delphinidin-3-O-galactoside, delphinidin-3-O-glucoside, petunidin-3-O-galactoside, petunidin-3-O-glucoside, and malvidin-3-O-galactoside) were isolated from rabbiteye blueberry (Vaccinium virgatum) cultivar "Garden blue." All these anthocyanins exhibited oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC), scavenging power of ABTS+, and DPPH-free radical and inhibitory activity of α-glucosidase in vitro. Moreover, some compounds improved glucose uptake and attenuated lipid accumulation in high glucose and oleic acid-treated HepG2 cells. All these results suggest that blueberry anthocyanins have potential antioxidant, hypoglycemic, and hypolipidemic effects, which may benefit the treatment of diabesity.

Distinct Urinary Metabolic Biomarkers of Human Colorectal Cancer.

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the most commonly diagnosed cancers with high mortality rate due to its poor diagnosis in the early stage. Here, we report a urinary metabolomic study on a cohort of CRC patients (n =67) and healthy controls (n =21) using ultraperformance liquid chromatography triple quadrupole mass spectrometry. Pathway analysis showed that a series of pathways that belong to amino acid metabolism, carbohydrate metabolism, and lipid metabolism were dysregulated, for instance the glycine, serine and threonine metabolism, alanine, aspartate and glutamate metabolism, glyoxylate and dicarboxylate metabolism, glycolysis, and TCA cycle. A total of 48 differential metabolites were identified in CRC compared to controls. A panel of 12 biomarkers composed of chenodeoxycholic acid, vanillic acid, adenosine monophosphate, glycolic acid, histidine, azelaic acid, hydroxypropionic acid, glycine, 3,4-dihydroxymandelic acid, 4-hydroxybenzoic acid, oxoglutaric acid, and homocitrulline were identified by Random Forest (RF), Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Boruta analysis classification model and validated by Gradient Boosting (GB), Logistic Regression (LR), and Random Forest diagnostic model, which were able to discriminate CRC subjects from healthy controls. These urinary metabolic biomarkers provided a novel and promising molecular approach for the early diagnosis of CRC.

Enhanced waste activated sludge digestion using a submerged anaerobic dynamic membrane bioreactor: performance, sludge characteristics and microbial community.

Anaerobic digestion (AD) plays an important role in waste activated sludge (WAS) treatment; however, conventional AD (CAD) process needs substantial improvements, especially for the treatment of WAS with low solids content and poor anaerobic biodegradability. Herein, we propose a submerged anaerobic dynamic membrane bioreactor (AnDMBR) for simultaneous WAS thickening and digestion without any pretreatment. During the long-term operation, the AnDMBR exhibited an enhanced sludge reduction and improved methane production over CAD process. Moreover, the biogas generated in the AnDMBR contained higher methane content than CAD process. Stable carbon isotopic signatures elucidated the occurrence of combined methanogenic pathways in the AnDMBR process, in which hydrogenotrophic methanogenic pathway made a larger contribution to the total methane production. It was also found that organic matter degradation was enhanced in the AnDMBR, thus providing more favorable substrates for microorganisms. Pyrosequencing revealed that Proteobacteria and Bacteroidetes were abundant in bacterial communities and Methanosarcina and Methanosaeta in archaeal communities, which played an important role in the AnDMBR system. This study shed light on the enhanced digestion of WAS using AnDMBR technology.

Dynamic Membrane Formation in Anaerobic Dynamic Membrane Bioreactors: Role of Extracellular Polymeric Substances.

Dynamic membrane (DM) formation in dynamic membrane bioreactors plays an important role in achieving efficient solid-liquid separation. In order to study the contribution of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) to DM formation in anaerobic dynamic membrane bioreactor (AnDMBR) processes, EPS extraction from and re-addition to bulk sludge were carried out in short-term filtration tests. DM formation behaviors could be well simulated by cake filtration model, and sludge with EPS re-addition showed the highest resistance coefficient, followed by sludge after EPS extraction. The DM layers exhibited a higher resistance and a lower porosity for the sludge sample after EPS extraction and for the sludge with EPS re-addition. Particle size of sludge flocs decreased after EPS extraction, and changed little with EPS re-addition, which was confirmed by interaction energy analysis. Further investigations by confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) analysis and batch tests suggested that the removal of in-situ EPS stimulated release of soluble EPS, and re-added EPS were present as soluble EPS rather than bound EPS, which thus improved the formation of DM. The present work revealed the role of EPS in anaerobic DM formation, and could facilitate the operation of AnDMBR processes.

Metaproteomics reveals major microbial players and their biodegradation functions in a large-scale aerobic composting plant.

Composting is an appropriate management alternative for municipal solid waste; however, our knowledge about the microbial regulation of this process is still scare. We employed metaproteomics to elucidate the main biodegradation pathways in municipal solid waste composting system across the main phases in a large-scale composting plant. The investigation of microbial succession revealed that Bacillales, Actinobacteria and Saccharomyces increased significantly with respect to abundance in composting process. The key microbiologic population for cellulose degradation in different composting stages was different. Fungi were found to be the main producers of cellulase in earlier phase. However, the cellulolytic fungal communities were gradually replaced by a purely bacterial one in active phase, which did not support the concept that the thermophilic fungi are active through the thermophilic phase. The effective decomposition of cellulose required the synergy between bacteria and fungi in the curing phase.

Membrane bioreactors fed with different COD/N ratio wastewater: impacts on microbial community, microbial products, and membrane fouling.

It is known that an increase of COD/N ratio can result in an enhanced removal of nutrients in membrane bioreactors (MBRs); however, impacts of doing so on membrane filtration performance remain unclear. In this work, comparison of membrane filtration performance, microbial community, and microbial products under low temperature was carried out in anoxic/oxic (A/O) MBRs with COD/N ratios of 9.9 and 5.5 g COD/g N in influent. There was no doubt that an improvement of nitrogen removal under high COD/N ratio was observed; however, severer membrane fouling was found compared to the MBR fed with low COD/N ratio wastewater. The increase of COD/N ratio resulted in an elevated production of humic acids in soluble microbial product (SMP) and carbohydrates, proteins, and humic acids in loosely bound extracellular polymeric substance (LB-EPS). Quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation monitoring (QCM-D) analysis showed that the adsorption capability of SMP and LB-EPS was higher in the MBR with higher COD/N ratio. Four hundred fifty four high-throughput pyrosequencing revealed that the higher COD/N ratio led to the enrichment of Bacteroidetes at phylum level and Azospira, Thauera, Zoogloea, etc. at genus level. Bacteroidetes are considered to potentially release EPS, and Azospira, Thauera, and Zoogloea, etc. have denitrification activity. The change in microbial communities is consistent with MBR performance.

Biogas production improvement and C/N control by natural clinoptilolite addition into anaerobic co-digestion of Phragmites australis, feces and kitchen waste.

Anaerobic co-digestion (A co-D) performance of Phragmites australis, feces and kitchen waste with addition of clinoptilolite (one main kind of zeolite) was investigated to evaluate the improvement of biogas/methane production and internal mechanism of nitrogen and organics control. A better biogas/methane production was observed by 10% clinoptilolite (v/v) than bentonite and diatomite, with the shortest lag phase of 0.070d(-1), the max rate of 15.89L/(kgVSday) and ultimate biogas production of 308.2L/kgVS as the modified Gompertz equation predicted. Accordingly, the content of methane in the biogas was increased from 44.10% to 65.30%. Furthermore, the clinoptilolite inhibited the acidification of digestion liquid (optimum pH 7.0-7.5) and enhanced the VFAs (acetic acid, propionic acid and butyric acid) destruction. Moreover, 10% of clinoptilolite optimally enhanced the microbial utilization of Ca(2+)/Mg(2+), controlled the C/N ratio, and improved the biogas production as well as NH3-N/NO3-N inhibition efficiency.

Effect of short-time hydrothermal pretreatment of kitchen waste on biohydrogen production: fluorescence spectroscopy coupled with parallel factor analysis.

The enhancement of bio-hydrogen production from kitchen waste by a short-time hydrothermal pretreatment at different temperatures (i.e., 90°C, 120°C, 150°C and 200°C) was evaluated. The effects of temperature for the short-time hydrothermal pretreatment on kitchen waste protein conversion and dissolved organic matter characteristics were investigated in this study. A maximum bio-hydrogen yield of 81.27mL/g VS was acquired at 200°C by the short-time hydrothermal pretreatment during the anaerobic fermentative hydrogen production. Analysis of the dissolved organic matter composition showed that the protein-like peak dominated and that three fluorescent components were separated using fluorescence excitation-emission matrix spectra coupled with the parallel factor model. The maximum fluorescence intensities of protein-like components decomposed through the parallel factor analysis has a significant correlation with the raw protein concentration, showed by further correlation analysis. This directly impacted the hydrogen production ability.

Comparison of bacterial community structure and dynamics during the thermophilic composting of different types of solid wastes: anaerobic digestion residue, pig manure and chicken manure.

This study investigated the impact of composting substrate types on the bacterial community structure and dynamics during composting processes. To this end, pig manure (PM), chicken manure (CM), a mixture of PM and CM (PM + CM), and a mixture of PM, CM and anaerobic digestion residue (ADR) (PM + CM + ADR) were selected for thermophilic composting. The bacterial community structure and dynamics during the composting process were detected and analysed by polymerase chain reaction-denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) coupled with a statistic analysis. The physical-chemical analyses indicated that compared to single-material composting (PM, CM), co-composting (PM + CM, PM + CM + ADR) could promote the degradation of organic matter and strengthen the ability of conserving nitrogen. A DGGE profile and statistical analysis demonstrated that co-composting, especially PM + CM + ADR, could improve the bacterial community structure and functional diversity, even in the thermophilic stage. Therefore, co-composting could weaken the screening effect of high temperature on bacterial communities. Dominant sequencing analyses indicated a dramatic shift in the dominant bacterial communities from single-material composting to co-composting. Notably, compared with PM, PM + CM increased the quantity of xylan-degrading bacteria and reduced the quantity of human pathogens.

Ion chromatography as highly suitable method for rapid and accurate determination of antibiotic fosfomycin in pharmaceutical wastewater.

A rapid and accurate ion chromatography (IC) method (limit of detection as low as 0.06 mg L(-1)) for fosfomycin concentration determination in pharmaceutical industrial wastewater was developed. This method was compared with the performance of high performance liquid chromatography determination (with a high detection limit of 96.0 mg L(-1)) and ultraviolet spectrometry after reacting with alizarin (difficult to perform in colored solutions). The accuracy of the IC method was established in the linear range of 1.0-15.0 mg L(-1) and a linear correlation was found with a correlation coefficient of 0.9998. The recoveries of fosfomycin from industrial pharmaceutical wastewater at spiking concentrations of 2.0, 5.0 and 8.0 mg L(-1) ranged from 81.91 to 94.74%, with a relative standard deviation (RSD) from 1 to 4%. The recoveries of effluent from a sequencing batch reactor treated fosfomycin with activated sludge at spiking concentrations of 5.0, 8.0, 10.0 mg L(-1) ranging from 98.25 to 99.91%, with a RSD from 1 to 2%. The developed IC procedure provided a rapid, reliable and sensitive method for the determination of fosfomycin concentration in industrial pharmaceutical wastewater and samples containing complex components.

Identification of microbial communities in open and closed circuit bioelectrochemical MBRs by high-throughput 454 pyrosequencing.

Two bioelectrochemical membrane bioreactors (MBRs) developed by integrating microbial fuel cell and MBR technology were operated under closed-circuit and open-circuit modes, and high-throughput 454 pyrosequencing was used to investigate the effects of the power generation on the microbial community of bio-anode and bio-cathode. Microbes on the anode under open-circuit operation (AO) were enriched and highly diverse when compared to those on the anode under closed-circuit operation (AC). However, among the cathodes the closed-circuit mode (CC) had richer and more diverse microbial community compared to the cathode under open-circuit mode (CO). On the anodes AO and AC, Proteobacteria and Bacteroidetes were the dominant phyla, while Firmicutes was enriched only on AC. Deltaproteobacteria affiliated to Proteobacteria were also more abundant on AC than AO. Furthermore, the relative abundance of Desulfuromonas, which are well-known electrogenic bacteria, were much higher on AC (10.2%) when compared to AO (0.11%), indicating that closed-circuit operation was more conducive for the growth of electrogenic bacteria on the anodes. On the cathodes, Protebacteria was robust on CC while Bacteroidetes was more abundant on CO. Rhodobacter and Hydrogenophaga were also enriched on CC than CO, suggesting that these genera play a role in electron transfer from the cathode surface to the terminal electron acceptors in the bioelectrochemical MBR under closed-circuit operation.

An anaerobic dynamic membrane bioreactor (AnDMBR) for landfill leachate treatment: performance and microbial community identification.

In this study, a pilot-scale anaerobic dynamic membrane bioreactor was operated for 142days for treating landfill leachate. Under stable operation, average COD removal efficiency of 62.2% was achieved when the reactor was fed with the raw leachate containing total ammonium concentration above 3000mg/L and COD above 13,000mg/L. The methane content in the biogas was in the range of 70-90%, and the average methane yield was 0.34L/g CODremoved at the organic loading rate of 4.87kg COD/(m(3)d). Pyrosequencing analyses indicated that during the operation the archaeal community was relatively stable while obvious changes took place in the bacterial community. Alkaliphilus, Petrimonas, Fastidiosipila and vadinBC27 were the abundant fermentation bacteria in bacterial communities. Moreover, phylum TM6 gradually became the most dominant bacterial community and reached the highest relative abundance of 32.9% as the operation elapsed. In archaeal communities, genus Methanosarcina was identified as the dominant methanogen.

Assessment of humification degree of dissolved organic matter from different composts using fluorescence spectroscopy technology.

This study was conducted to assess the degree of humification in dissolved organic matter (DOM) from different composts, and their environmental impact after soil amending based on fluorescence measurements (emission, excitation, synchronous scan, and excitation-emission matrix [EEM]). The compost sources studied included dairy cattle manure (DCM), kitchen waste (KW), cabbage waste (CW), tomato stem waste (TSW), municipal solid waste (MSW), green waste (GW), chicken manure (CM), and peat (P). Conventional and EEM fluorescence spectroscopy indicated that the DOM of these composts contained compounds similar in structure but comparisons between conventional fluorescence parameters and fluorescence regional integration of EEM fluorescence spectra showed that the DOM was different in degree of humification. Regression analysis demonstrated significant corrections between major fluorescence parameters. In hierarchical cluster analysis, these composts were clustered into 2 groups and 4 subgroups, and projection pursuit regression analysis further ranked the compost sources as KW, CW, P>CM, DCM, TW, GW>MSW in their degree of humification in DOM.

Analysis of nitrification efficiency and microbial community in a membrane bioreactor fed with low COD/N-ratio wastewater.

In this study, an approach using influent COD/N ratio reduction was employed to improve process performance and nitrification efficiency in a membrane bioreactor (MBR). Besides sludge reduction, membrane fouling alleviation was observed during 330 d operation, which was attributed to the decreased production of soluble microbial products (SMP) and efficient carbon metabolism in the autotrophic nitrifying community. 454 high-throughput 16S rRNA gene pyrosequencing revealed that the diversity of microbial sequences was mainly determined by the feed characteristics, and that microbes could derive energy by switching to a more autotrophic metabolism to resist the environmental stress. The enrichment of nitrifiers in an MBR with a low COD/N-ratio demonstrated that this condition stimulated nitrification, and that the community distribution of ammonia oxidizing bacteria (AOB) and nitrite oxidizing bacteria (NOB) resulted in faster nitrite uptake rates. Further, ammonia oxidation was the rate-limiting step during the full nitrification.

A 100-year sedimentary record of natural and anthropogenic impacts on a shallow eutrophic lake, Lake Chaohu, China.

In this study, the sediment profiles of total organic carbon, total nitrogen, C/N ratios, total phosphorus, N/P ratios, C/P ratios, particle sizes, and stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes (δ(13)C and δ(15)N) were used to investigate natural and anthropogenic impacts on Lake Chaohu over the past 100 years. Before 1960, Lake Chaohu experienced low productivity and a relatively steady and low nutrient input. The increasing concentration and fluxes of total organic carbon, total nitrogen, total phosphorus, together with changes in the δ(13)C and δ(15)N of organic material in the sediment cores, suggested that the anthropogenic effects on trophic status first started because of an increase in nutrient input caused by a population increase in the drainage area. With the construction of the Chaohu Dam, an increase in the utilization of fertilizer and the population growth which occurred since 1960, stable depositional conditions and increasing nutrient input resulted in a dominantly algae-derived organic matter source and high productivity. Nutrient input increased most significantly around 1980 following the rapidly growing population, with concomitant urbanization, industrial and agricultural development. This study also revealed that the concentration and distribution of nutrients varied between different areas of sediment within Lake Chaohu because of the influence of different drainage basins and pollution sources.