Bacterial communities in industrial wastewater bioreactors

Wastewater bioreactors have been used to treat domestic and industrial waste for nearly a century. Development of molecular tools such as PCR and DNA microarrays have enabled identification and characterization of some of the microbes in these bioreactors; however, molecular characterization of the microbes is still in its infancy, and only a few of the molecular tools have been applied to improving performance of wastewater bioreactors at the commercial level. Several new plasmids and enzymes have been isolated from wastewater bioreactors. There is enormous opportunity to use the microbes from wastewater for industrial bioprocesses.