Introduction

Anammox (anaerobic ammonium oxidation) is the most important finding in nitrogen cycle for the last two decades [1]. Anammox bacteria deeply branch in Planctomycetales, and contribute greatly in natural habitats (responsible for 50%, 9~40%, and 4~37% of the nitrogen loss for marine, lakes, and paddy soils) [2–4]. There are five genera of anammox bacteria were identified to date including Ca. Brocadia [5], Ca. Kuenenia [6], Ca. Scalindua [7], Ca. Anammoxoglobus [8], and Ca. Jettenia [9]. Each genus shows distinct physiological property and adapts to specific habitat [10]. Hence, the community composition of anammox bacteria is very diverse in natural habitats.

The detection of anammox bacteria is greatly relied on PCR based amplification which is an easy, essential, and widely accessible technique [11]. The 16S rRNA gene is the most used marker gene offering phylogeny details in various researches. Besides, many functional genes targeting central anammox activity enzymes were applied for the amplification of anammox bacteria. The functional genes were less used but have high specificity and reflected functional activity [12]. The PCR bias by different maker genes often skews the distribution of PCR products due to the unequal amplification or cloning efficiency [13]. The choosing of marker genes was empiric and varied largely in different habitats in PCR of anammox bacteria. However, how is the community composed revealed by various marker genes, and whether the usage of different marker genes would affect the resulted anammox bacterial community remained unclear. Here we compared the enriched anammox bacteria revealed by different marker genes to show their similarities on genus level. Moreover, the community composition in natural habitats was summarized and compared from published peer-review publications to show the influence of marker genes.

Methods and materials

The representative sequences of enriched anammox bacteria of each genus was retrieved from GenBank. The similarities of the 16S rRNA and functional genes between genera were obtained by blastx in NCBI and compared pairwisely. Peer-reviewed anammox related papers in natural habitats were searched in Web of Science (published in 2006.10–2020.04) with keywords of anammox and anaerobic ammonium oxidation. The community composition was summarized according to their original description in each study. The diversity indexes (Shannon Simpson Chao 1 and Ace) were calculated by Mothur program using the collected sequences in each paper (v.1.40.1, https://www.mothur.org/wiki/).

Non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) based on Bray-Curtis dissimilarity was conducted in CANOCO 5 [14]. Similarly, analysis of similarity (ANOSIM) based on Bray-Curtis distances was conducted on community structure difference test using R (version 3.5.1, vegan package). Variation partitioning analysis (VPA) was then used to quantify the relative influences of habitat and marker gene on the anammox bacterial community in CANOCO 5 [14].

Results

Comparison of enriched anammox bacteria

Representative nucleotide sequences for the 5 known genera of the frequently used genes: 16S rRNA and functional genes (hzo, hzsA and hzsB) were obtained from Genbank (S1 Table). Sequence of Ca. Anammoxoglobus was missing in hzsB gene. The nucleotide identities (NI) between the representative sequences of the 5 known genera varied considerably between 16S rRNA and functional genes. The NI of 16S rRNA gene showed the highest values with 90.0% to 95.6% identities, and the hzsA gene showed the lowest similarities with NI of 66.9% to 85.7% (Fig 1A). The genus of Ca. Scalindua showed the largest difference with other 4 genera in all genes, in which the NI were 89.0%-90.3% for 16S rRNA gene, 79.5%-81.1% for hzo gene, 66.9%-68.6% for hzsA gene and 81.2%-83.3% for hzsB gene. Aside from Ca. Scalindua, the other 4 genera showed relatively high similarity with NI of 92.9%-95.6% for 16S rRNA, 81.6%-89.4% for hzo, 83.7%-85.7% for hzsA and 81.2–87.0% for hzsB. The dissimilarities between genera revealed by functional and 16S rRNA genes varied largely except the hzo and 16S rRNA genes (Fig 2B).

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Fig 1. Pairwise nucleotide identity comparisons of functional and 16S rRNA genes of the 5 known genera.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239736.g001

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Fig 2.

Anammox bacterial community composition in different habitats (a), and NMDS ordination based on Bray-Curtis distance of the sequences affiliation to each genera (b).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239736.g002

Community composition in natural habitats

According to the habitat preference of anammox bacteria, the 221 collected studies were divided into four groups which were marine, estuary, freshwater and soil environments (Table 1). The freshwater environment contained a wide range of habitats including lake, river and freshwater wetland. The 16S rRNA gene was the most used marker gene studying the anammox bacteria which included 151 out 221 studies. The hzo gene was the second most used marker gene with 43 studies, and a majority of them were from marine (17) and estuary (14) habitats. Relatively limited studies used the hzsA and hzsB genes with 10 and 17 studies, respectively.

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Table 1. Number of collected papers with respective marker genes in each habitat.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239736.t001

In marine and estuary habitats, the Ca. Scalindua was dominant genus accounting for 88.2% and 69.3% of the total anammox bacteria (Fig 2A). In contrast, the Ca. Scalindua only accounted for 9.3% and 8.5% in freshwater and soil environments. Meanwhile, the Ca. Brocadia dominated these two environments taking for 43.7% and 57.0% of total anammox bacteria, respectively. Sequences of Ca. Anammoxoglobus was observed with relatively higher proportion in soil and freshwater environments than those in marine and estuary. Besides, Ca. Jettenia and Ca. Kuenenia also took higher proportions in freshwater and soil environments with 13.7% and 15.9%, 6.1% and 11.2%, respectively. The NMDS ordination further showed that the anammox bacterial community composition was distributed according to their habitats, in which the P value was 0.001 in ANOSIM comparison. The anammox bacteria in marine and estuary environments were closely distributed, and those of freshwater and soil fell together (Fig 2B).

Community composition revealed by various marker genes

The community composition revealed by the most frequently used two genes were compared in each habitat to show the effect of marker genes (Fig 3A). The anammox bacterial community in marine environment revealed by 16S rRNA and hzo genes were very similar, so were those of estuary environment. The only difference was that the Ca. Jettenia revealed by hzo gene (14.6%) was more abundant than that of 16S rRNA (0.4%) in estuary. Whereas the 16S rRNA gene identified more Ca. Kuenenia related sequences (12.1%) than hzo gene (0). However, the community composition in freshwater environment revealed by 16S rRNA differed significantly with that of hzo gene. The most abundant genus was Ca. Brocadia (49.5%) revealed by 16S rRNA gene, followed by Ca. Kuenenia (17.4%) and Ca. Jettenia (4.3%). The unclassified sequences name by others took a considerable proportion of 18.0%. As to hzo gene, the Ca. Jettenia was predominant taking 76.3% of the total anammox bacterial community. The other four genus took limited proportion which accounting for 14.2% in total. The unclassified group (9.5%) was smaller than that of 16S rRNA gene. No significant difference was observed in soil habitat using 16S rRNA and hzsB genes. In the VPA, the factor of sole habitat took a relatively higher explanation with 20.5% of the variance of community composition. The factor of marker gene explained 5.4% of the variance. The cross effect of habitat and marker genes explained 4.6% of the variance.

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Fig 3.

Community composition revealed by the most used two genes in each habitats (a), and Variation Partitioning Analysis (VPA) showing the relative role of habitat and marker gene on the structuring of the anammox bacterial community composition (b).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239736.g003

Alpha diversity revealed by different marker genes

Alpha diversity was assessed by calculating four indexes of Shannon, Simpson, Chao1 and Ace index. The alpha diversity from the 221 studies did not show difference between the 4 habitats (S1 Fig). But the Simpson index revealed by hzo gene showed significantly lower values than those of 16S rRNA gene, which suggested higher diversity revealed by hzo gene (Fig 4). The other three indexes did not show any difference between the 4 marker genes.

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Fig 4. Alpha diversity revealed by the 4 marker genes, significant difference was marked with asterisk (*).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239736.g004

Discussion

PCR amplification is the primary tool to identify anammox bacteria in natural habitats. Multiple marker genes were applied in PCR along with our increasing knowledge of the evolution and metabolism of anammox bacteria [15]. Previous studies showed that different marker genes might result contrasting community structures [16–18]. However, the bias of marker gene in amplifying anammox bacteria in natural habitats have not been fully investigated.

The genus Ca. Scalindua showed the largest difference with other genera presented by all 4 frequently used marker genes, and those amplified by hzsA gene showed the highest dissimilarities. In contrast, the dissimilarities between Ca. Scalindua and other genera were the lowest presented by 16S rRNA gene. The Ca. Scalindua is the dominant genus in marine environment [10]. Therefore, we speculated that the community composition analysis using hzsA gene would provide higher resolution when sample from marine was all involved. Besides, the dissimilarities between genera showed comparable values between hzo and 16S rRNA genes. It implied a relatively congruent evolutionary relationship of hzo and 16S rRNA genes of anammox bacteria.

The 16S rRNA was the most commonly used marker gene for PCR, studies of which were overwhelming (151/221) compared with other marker genes. Besides, most of the cultured anammox bacteria were identified and submitted to public database in form of 16S rRNA gene fragments. There were 17 species of enriched anammox bacteria in GenBank to our statistics [19]. Due to the abundant reference sequences of enriched anammox bacteria, the 16S rRNA gene is a better option in phylogenetic analysis. However, the 16S rRNA gene as a molecular marker is not necessarily related to the physiology of anammox bacteria [12], and the highly conserved nature of the 16S rRNA gene limits its use in revealing the full diversity of anammox bacteria [10]. Analysis of the functional genes involved in specific anammox biochemical reactions could significantly increase the detection efficiency and specificity [20].

The result of anammox bacterial community composition was different using 16S rRNA and hzo genes, which revealed more Ca. Brocadia and Ca. Jettenia in freshwater habitats, respectively. It implied a clear influence of marker genes on the anammox bacterial community composition. The bias of marker genes had been reported that hzsB based community analyses showed 3 genera of Ca. Brocadia, Ca. Scalindua and Ca. Jettenia in paddy soil, but the hzo gene showed only Ca. Brocadia [16]. In marine sediment, the hzo gene based diversity analyses revealed 5 genera versus 1 genus by 16S rRNA gene [21]. In a freshwater river, the diversity of anammox bacteria revealed by hzo gene was higher than that of 16S rRNA [17]. The contrast of community compositions resulted by different marker genes were mostly caused by the nature 16S rRNA and functional genes which had different detection specificity and efficiency [10]. Besides, the different sources of reference sequences during primers design may lead to bias in amplification efficiency to specific genus [22]. However, no such difference was observed in marine and estuary habitats. It was coincide with previous study that 3 marker genes of 16S rRNA, hzo, and hzsA all showed that Ca. Scalindua was dominant in marine habitats [23]. It was mostly because the diversity on genus level was too low and the genus Ca. Scalindua was dominant in these two habitats, that different marker genes resulted similar community composition. It was notable that the marker genes appeared to have no impact on the anammox bacterial community composition in soil, which was coincide with previous study in aquifer sediment using same marker genes [24]. It was probably because that the primers targeting the hzsB and 16S rRNA genes have similar specificity and efficiency in amplification. Besides, it also suggested that the role of marker gene in affecting the resulted community composition was limited, as showed in the VPA with low variance from marker gene. Only limited difference was observed on the alpha diversity between marker genes which seemed to be controversial with the community composition analysis. However, we should note that the comparison of alpha diversity was based on sequence level, whereas the comparison of community composition was based on genus level.

In conclusion, we observed the effect of marker gene on the resulted community composition of anammox bacteria in natural habitats, which was significant in freshwater environments. But the overall effect of marker genes was limited for all natural habitats. The 16S rRNA gene showed advance in phylogenetic analysis and the functional genes revealed more diversities of anammox bacteria on genus level.

Supporting information

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Chunchen Hu, Xiaohan Liu, Yaohao Hu, and Yiben Li for their kind help in experiment and discussion.