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Updated: May 6, 2026

Continuously-stirred Anaerobic Digester to Convert Organic Wastes into Biogas: System Setup and Basic Operation
Published on: July 13, 2012
Substrate type drives variation in reactor microbiomes of anaerobic digesters
Wei Zhang1, Jeffrey J Werner, Matthew T Agler
1Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
Abstract:
The goal of this study was to obtain causative information about beta-diversity (differentiation between microbiomes) by comparing sequencing information between studies rather than just knowledge about alpha-diversity (microbiome richness). Here, published sequencing data were merged representing 78 anaerobic digester samples originating from 28 different studies for an overall comparison of beta-diversity (measured using unweighted UniFrac). It was found that digester microbiomes based on bacterial sequences clustered by substrate type, independent of the study of origin, and that this clustering could be attributed to distinct bacterial lineages.
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