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Metabolic cross-feeding interactions modulate the dynamic community structure in microbial fuel cell under variable organic loading wastewaters

Fig 5

Manipulation of metabolic cross-feeding during increasing organic concentration.

A, Dominant microbial groups under varying sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) and sulfide-oxidizing bacteria (SOB) exchange capacities () and organic concentrations. Dots with black edges represent the original equilibrium of the exchange capacities of SRB-SOB under the low organic loading condition (L-OLR), and high organic loading conditions (H-OLR). is an exchange capacity flux of the metabolite i of microbial group k including SRB, methanogen (MET), and SOB. B, Proposed microbial metabolic cross-feeding () at original and high SRB-SOB exchange capacities in H-OLR condition. is exchange reaction flux of the metabolite i in community compartment (COM) and the microbial group k including SRB, MET, and SOB. Positive (+) and negative (-) exchange fluxes indicate metabolite secretion (+) and consumption (-) for microbial compartments, while representing metabolite influx (+) and efflux (-) for COM. The exchange fluxes on x-axis are represented in an exponential scale.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1012533.g005