Micropollutant-driven bacterial adaptation enables resilient pharmaceuticals biodegradation at trace concentrations in biologically treated wastewater - PubMed
5 hours ago
- #Pharmaceuticals bioremediation
- #Wastewater treatment
- #Microbial adaptation
- Micropollutant-driven bacterial adaptation enables resilient pharmaceuticals biodegradation at trace concentrations in biologically treated wastewater.
- Microbial consortia enriched in membrane bioreactors retained full biodegradation capacity across a 5000-fold concentration range.
- Complete removal occurred for all pharmaceuticals except diclofenac after prolonged exposure.
- Degradation remained efficient at environmentally relevant concentrations (1 mg/L-20 µg/L) and recovered rapidly upon re-exposure to higher loads (100 mg/L).
- Metagenomic profiling revealed enrichment of oxygenase-mediated catabolic pathways supporting resilience.
- The adapted community demonstrated robustness, scalability, and strong potential for sustainable micropollutant remediation when transferred to a real wastewater bioreactor.