Tracking Functional Microbiomes of The UK’s Anaerobic Digestion Reactors

This 1 year project, funded by BBSRC and led by Prof. Orkun Soyer at the University of Warwick, focuses on furthering our understanding of anaerobic digestion, particularly on how the complex microbial communities affect and are affected by operational conditions. 16 UK AD reactors are taking part in the project, where both genetic and meta-data are collected weekly. The large amounts of  genetic data will allow us to characterise which species of microbes inhabit the digesters, what their functions are and, importantly, how they change over time. The meta-data will allow us to monitor changes in response to their environment. The datasets will be made available through the project website at http://anaerodynamics.com , providing an unbiased and transparent source of information on the performance of industrial AD reactors in real time, which we hope will help to enhance and expand this technology in the UK.