Abstract
Analysis of intracellular metabolites is essential to delineate metabolic pathways of microbial communities for evaluation and optimization of anaerobic fermentation processes. The metabolomics are reported for a microbial community during two stages of anaerobic fermentation of corn stalk in a biogas digester using GC–MS. Acetonitrile/methanol/water (2:2:1, by vol) was the best extraction solvent for microbial community analysis because it yielded the largest number of peaks (>200), the highest mean summed value of identified metabolites (23) and the best reproducibility with a coefficient of variation of 30 % among four different extraction methods. Inter-stage comparison of metabolite profiles showed increased levels of sugars and sugar alcohols during methanogenesis and fatty acids during acidogenesis. Identification of stage-specific metabolic pathways using metabolomics can therefore assist in monitoring and optimization of the microbial community for increased biogas production during anaerobic fermentation.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Dinesh Kumar Barupal for helping the generation of metabolic network and the preparation of manuscript. This work were financial supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41276143, 31101918), 863 program (No. 2012AA052103), National Science & Technology Pillar Program (No. 2010BAC67B03), R&D of biogas industry technology (No. Y113031103) and Taishan Scholar Program of Shandong.
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Yang, D., Fan, X., Shi, X. et al. Metabolomics reveals stage-specific metabolic pathways of microbial communities in two-stage anaerobic fermentation of corn-stalk. Biotechnol Lett 36, 1461–1468 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-014-1508-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-014-1508-3