Water Research最新文献

{"title":"Multi-omics reveal microbial succession and metabolomic adaptations to flood in a hypersaline coastal lagoon","authors":"Christopher Keneally ,&nbsp;Daniel Chilton ,&nbsp;Tyler N. Dornan ,&nbsp;Stephen P. Kidd ,&nbsp;Virginie Gaget ,&nbsp;Adam Toomes ,&nbsp;Charlotte Lassaline ,&nbsp;Reuben Petrovski ,&nbsp;Lisa Wood ,&nbsp;Justin D. Brookes","doi":"10.1016/j.watres.2025.123511","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.watres.2025.123511","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Microorganisms drive essential biogeochemical processes in aquatic ecosystems and are sensitive to both salinity and hydrological changes. As climate change and anthropogenic activities alter hydrology and salinity worldwide, understanding microbial ecology and metabolism becomes increasingly important for managing aquatic ecosystems. Biogeochemical processes were investigated on sediment microbial communities during a significant flood event in the hypersaline Coorong lagoon, South Australia (the largest in the Murray-Darling Basin since 1956). Samples from six sites across a salinity gradient were collected before and during flooding in 2022. To assess changes in microbial taxonomy and metabolic function, 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing was employed alongside untargeted liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC-MS) to assess changes in microbial taxonomy and metabolic function. Results showed a decrease in microbial richness and diversity during flooding, especially in hypersaline conditions. Pre-flood communities were enriched with osmolyte-degrading and methanogenic taxa, alongside osmoprotectant metabolites, such as glycine betaine and choline. Flood conditions favored taxa such as <em>Halanaerobiaceae</em> and <em>Beggiatoaceae</em>, inducing inferred metagenomic shifts indicative of sulfur cycling and nitrogen reduction pathways, while also enriching a greater diversity of metabolites including Gly-Phe dipeptides and guanine. This study demonstrates that integrating metabolomics with microbial community analysis enhances understanding of ecosystem responses to disturbance. These findings suggest microbial communities rapidly change in response to salinity reductions while maintaining key biogeochemical functions. Such insights are valuable for ecosystem management and predictive modelling under environmental stressors such as flooding.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":443,"journal":{"name":"Water Research","volume":"280 ","pages":"Article 123511"},"PeriodicalIF":11.4,"publicationDate":"2025-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143640120","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The high pKa-guided defect engineering: improving fluoride removal in actual scenarios by benzimidazole modulated metal-organic frameworks","authors":"Ziyi Zhao ,&nbsp;Yanan Mi ,&nbsp;Shili Wang ,&nbsp;Xuedong Du ,&nbsp;Qingrui Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.watres.2025.123510","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.watres.2025.123510","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We firstly present a novel strategy for enhancing fluoride removal from contaminated water using defect-engineered UiO-66 (Zr-MOFs), emphasizing the crucial role of pKa in modulator selection. By utilizing modulators with varying pKa values-specifically benzimidazole (BI), benzoic acid (BA), and acetic acid (AA)-we synthesized defect-rich Act-UiO-66-M(X). The higher pKa of BI facilitated greater defect formation, resulting in significantly improved adsorption capacity and faster diffusion rates. Act-UiO-66-BI(8), modulated with BI, showed a higher intensity peak at <em>g</em> = 2.003 in ESR analysis, indicating more oxygen vacancies. Its fluoride adsorption capacity reached 93.59 mg F/g, nearly six times higher than commercial ZrO₂, with rapid kinetics—evidenced by a kinetic rate constant (k_int) of 2.64 mg/g·min^0.5 and equilibrium achieved within 10 min. The kinetic performance was enhanced by 270% compared to raw Act-UiO-66. Furthermore, Act-UiO-66-BI(8) demonstrated high selectivity and stability in high-salinity environments, with a K_d coefficient consistently exceeding 17,900 mL/g. The study highlights that selecting modulators based on pKa enhances defect formation, improving active site exposure and pore diffusion, as confirmed by DFT calculations and XPS analysis. The ability of Act-UiO-66-BI(8) to treat up to 1160 kg of wastewater per kg of adsorbent highlights its potential for large-scale water purification, showcasing a promising approach for developing high-performance MOF materials.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":443,"journal":{"name":"Water Research","volume":"280 ","pages":"Article 123510"},"PeriodicalIF":11.4,"publicationDate":"2025-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143635596","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Metagenomic analysis revealed community-level metabolic differences between full-scale EBPR and S2EBPR systems","authors":"Guangyu Li ,&nbsp;Varun Srinivasan ,&nbsp;Nicholas B. Tooker ,&nbsp;Dongqi Wang ,&nbsp;Annalisa Onnis-Hayden ,&nbsp;Charles Bott ,&nbsp;Paul Dombrowski ,&nbsp;Ameet Pinto ,&nbsp;April Z. Gu","doi":"10.1016/j.watres.2025.123509","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.watres.2025.123509","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Side-Stream Enhanced Biological Phosphorus Removal (S2EBPR) has emerged as a promising technology addressing certain challenges of conventional Enhanced Biological Phosphorus Removal (EBPR), notably stability in phosphorus removal, yet the underlying mechanisms are not fully understood. Metagenomic analysis presents a powerful approach to elucidate community-level metabolic differences between EBPR and S2EBPR configurations. In this study, we compared three EBPR and three S2EBPR activated sludge communities using metagenomic analysis at taxonomy, key functional pathways/genes, and polyphosphate-metabolism marker genes. Our analysis revealed larger genus-level diversity variance in S2EBPR communities, indicating distinct microbial community compositions influenced by different operational configurations. A higher diversity index in the S2EBPR than the EBPR was observed, and a higher <em>Ca.</em> Accumulibacter abundance was detected in EBPRs, whereas the fermentative candidate PAOs genera, including <em>Ca.</em> Phosphoribacter and <em>Ca.</em> Promineifilum, were more abundant in S2EBPR systems. EBPR and S2EBPR groups displayed similar gene and pathway abundance patterns related to core metabolisms essential for carbon and nitrogen metabolism. PolyP-metabolism marker gene phylogeny analysis suggested that exopolyphosphatase gene (<em>ppx</em>) showed better distinctions between EBPR and S2EBPR communities than polyphosphate kinase gene (<em>ppk</em>). This also highlighted the needs in fine-cale microdiversity analysis and finding novel <em>Ca.</em> Accumulibacter clades and species as resolved using the <em>ppk</em> gene. These findings provide valuable insights into AS community dynamics and metabolic functionalities, paving the way for further research into optimizing phosphorus removal processes in wastewater treatment systems.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":443,"journal":{"name":"Water Research","volume":"280 ","pages":"Article 123509"},"PeriodicalIF":11.4,"publicationDate":"2025-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143631443","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Gradient purification of surface water and ultrafiltration membrane fouling mitigation based on Fe(VI) multifunctional integration characteristics: Is a sedimentation unit necessary?","authors":"Kunyu Chen ,&nbsp;Jie Wang ,&nbsp;Xiaojiang Huang ,&nbsp;Ruimin Mu ,&nbsp;Congwei Luo ,&nbsp;Daoji Wu ,&nbsp;Jing Liu ,&nbsp;Jinsuo Lu ,&nbsp;Xiaoxiang Cheng","doi":"10.1016/j.watres.2025.123508","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.watres.2025.123508","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Ferrate (Fe(VI)) can provide oxidation and in-situ coagulation/adsorption for the removal of emerging contaminants and natural organic matter, and can be used in conjunction with ultrafiltration (UF) membrane to enhance the removal of composite contaminants and mitigate UF membrane fouling. Based on the Fe(VI) multifunctional integration characteristics, the study objectively and comprehensively verified the gradient purification of surface water and the UF membrane fouling mitigation by Fe(VI)-UF and sulfite (S(IV)) activated Fe(VI) (S(IV)/Fe(VI))-UF, elucidated the effect of sedimentation unit on the UF mechanism and the membrane fouling behaviors, and revealed the free energy changes throughout the UF process. The experimental results demonstrated that S(IV)/Fe(VI)-UF showed superior purification performance and UF membrane fouling mitigation than Fe(VI)-UF. S(IV)/Fe(VI)-UF achieved removals of sulfamethoxazole, DOC, and UV₂₅₄ up to 77.73 %, 61.86 %, and 86.33 %, and was able to significantly mitigate UF membrane fouling by prolonging the transition stage and positively shifting the interfacial free energy. Innovatively, the absence of a sedimentation unit was found to adversely affect the initial stages of Fe(VI)-UF and S(IV)/Fe(VI)-UF by lowering the energy barriers, while negligibly affecting cake filtration. Additionally, the water treatment cost of S(IV)/Fe(VI) was 0.3 yuan per ton, indicating notable economic benefits and engineering potential. While deepening the understanding of Fe(VI) multifunctional integration characteristics, the above results provided theoretical and data support for S(IV)/Fe(VI)-UF and Fe(VI)-UF treatment of surface water, and enriched the application scenarios of Fe(VI)-related technologies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":443,"journal":{"name":"Water Research","volume":"280 ","pages":"Article 123508"},"PeriodicalIF":11.4,"publicationDate":"2025-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143631442","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Global meta-analysis deciphering ecological restoration performance of dredging: Divergent variabilities of pollutants and hydrobiontes","authors":"Wenjie Wan ,&nbsp;Hans-Peter Grossart ,&nbsp;Qinglong L. Wu ,&nbsp;Xiang Xiong ,&nbsp;Wenke Yuan ,&nbsp;Weihong Zhang ,&nbsp;Quanfa Zhang ,&nbsp;Wenzhi Liu ,&nbsp;Yuyi Yang","doi":"10.1016/j.watres.2025.123506","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.watres.2025.123506","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Global “Sustainable Development Goals” propose ambitious targets to protect water resource and provide clean water, whereas comprehensive understanding of restoration performance and ecological mechanisms are lacking for dredging adopted for purifying polluted waterbodies and maintaining navigation channels. Here, we conducted a global meta-analysis to estimate ecological restoration consequence of dredging as pollution mitigation and navigation channel maintenance measures using a dataset compiled from 191 articles covering 696 studies and 84 environmental and ecological parameters (e.g., pollutants and hydrobiontes). We confirm that dredging shows negative influences on 77.50% pollutants in the BA model (before dredging vs. after dredging) and 84.21% pollutants in the CI model (control vs. impact) as well as on sediment nutrient fluxes. Additionally, 57.14% attributes (i.e., richness, diversity, biomass, and density) of hydrobiontes in the BA model and 89.47% attributes of hydrobiontes in the CI model responded negatively to dredging. As a result, 76.32% of the pollutants and 61.11% of the hydrobiont attributes responded uniformly to dredging in the BA and CI models. Our findings emphasize that dredging generally decreases pollutants and mitigates algal blooms, controlling phosphorus is easier than controlling nitrogen by dredging, and attributes (i.e., richness, diversity, and biomass) of hydrobiontes (i.e., zooplankton, phytoplankton, and zoobenthos) are density-dependent in dredging-disturbed environments. Our findings broaden our knowledge on ecological restoration performance of dredging as a mitigation measure in global aquatic ecosystems, and these findings might be helpful to use and optimize dredging to efficiently and sustainably purify polluted aquatic ecosystems.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":443,"journal":{"name":"Water Research","volume":"280 ","pages":"Article 123506"},"PeriodicalIF":11.4,"publicationDate":"2025-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143631279","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Higher order volatile fatty acid metabolism and atypical polyhydroxyalkanoate production in fermentation-enhanced biological phosphorus removal","authors":"R. Thomson ,&nbsp;C. Le ,&nbsp;L. Wang ,&nbsp;D.J. Batstone ,&nbsp;Y. Zhou ,&nbsp;A. Oehmen","doi":"10.1016/j.watres.2025.123503","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.watres.2025.123503","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Enhanced biological phosphorus removal (EBPR) is an established wastewater treatment process, but its wider implementation has been limited by factors like high temperature and low carbon availability. Fermentation-enhanced EBPR (F-EBPR) processes have shown promise in addressing these limitations, but the underlying mechanisms are not fully understood. This study investigates the metabolism of higher order (C_4–5) volatile fatty acids (VFAs) in F-EBPR systems using a combination of carbon isotope labelling and shotgun metagenomic sequencing analyses. Results show that butyrate (HBu) uptake leads to the formation of both typical (C_4–5) and atypical (C₆₊) polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) through a combination ofβ-oxidation and standard condensation pathways, while the putative role of HBu oxidisers were identified relative to substrate composition in F-EBPR processes. Metagenomic analysis reveals the presence of genes required for higher order VFA metabolism in both polyphosphate accumulating organisms (PAOs) and glycogen accumulating organisms (GAOs). This study also highlights the limitations of current models in describing F-EBPR processes and emphasises the need for improved models that account for higher order VFA metabolism and microbial community dynamics.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":443,"journal":{"name":"Water Research","volume":"280 ","pages":"Article 123503"},"PeriodicalIF":11.4,"publicationDate":"2025-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143631441","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Flow time series decomposition to identify non-revenue water components in drinking water distribution systems: A data-driven approach","authors":"Maria Almeida Silva ,&nbsp;Conceição Amado ,&nbsp;Dália Loureiro","doi":"10.1016/j.watres.2025.123442","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.watres.2025.123442","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Water utilities face challenges in managing non-revenue water, which encompasses unbilled authorised consumption, leaks, bursts, authorised consumption errors, and unauthorised consumption. Several approaches have been developed to address these issues. Most existing methods focus on estimating individual components of non-revenue water, rather than considering all aspects comprehensively. The installation of smart water meters has significantly reduced unmetered billed consumption, addressing issues related to the absence of water meters in some customer locations or difficulties in systematic meter reading. Water utilities can obtain a comprehensive view of non-revenue water over time by combining the billed metered consumption time series obtained with smart meters with the network flow time series. Partitioning the non-revenue water time series into several components, each representing a different pattern in the data, can help one better grasp the underlying patterns. In this paper, time series decomposition techniques reveal hidden non-revenue water components, allowing the water utilities to create a network strategy to reduce water losses. Several decomposition methods were applied, and the best reliable results were achieved with Singular Spectrum Analysis.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":443,"journal":{"name":"Water Research","volume":"280 ","pages":"Article 123442"},"PeriodicalIF":11.4,"publicationDate":"2025-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143631440","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Intensifying transition metal ion removal and recovery from acidic wastewater via electrodialysis (ED) -based process","authors":"Petric Marc Ruya ,&nbsp;Miguel Perdigão Silva ,&nbsp;Geert Reyniers ,&nbsp;Gracia Angelly Ruya ,&nbsp;Siew Shee Lim ,&nbsp;I Gede Wenten ,&nbsp;Xing Yang","doi":"10.1016/j.watres.2025.123504","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.watres.2025.123504","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Industrial use of critical metals such as cobalt (Co) and manganese (Mn) generates metal-containing wastewater. Sustainable and effective solutions are yet to be developed to recover these elements in reusable forms, mainly due to the low metal ion concentration and presence of organics (e.g., in green plastic production). Thus, this study aimed to explore the feasibility of metal ion recovery from synthetic wastewater containing metal ions (e.g., Mn²⁺, Co²⁺) and high content of organic acid using electrodialysis (ED)-based process, with a specific focus to understand the fundamental performance constrains and find effective routes to intensify the recovery efficiency. The parametric study in the conventional ED demonstrated that the choice of more electrically conductive receiving solution greatly promoted the metal ion transport rate (ITR) by ∼26 % and reduced the energy consumption to 0.0045 kWh/kg metal recovered; while an optimal applied voltage of 1 V was chosen to avoid energy penalty through water splitting. Nevertheless, inherent limitations to further improvement of mass transfer of metal ions were identified in conventional ED. To this end, the adverse effect of concentration polarization was overcome by applying a pulsed electric field (PEF) in ED, reaching Co²⁺ ITR of 0.537mg·cm^-2·h^-1, which was 40 % higher than the optimal in conventional ED. Also, the competitive ion (<em>H</em>⁺ from acetic acid in this study) transport was found to impede the effective transfer of metal ions across the membrane. Thus, a novel integration of ED with a pretreatment method (i.e., super critical water gasification (SCWG)) was proposed to remove the acid for significantly intensifying the metal ion recovery with 50 % shorter treatment time, which was simulated to demonstrate the potential of energy self-sufficiency. The findings highlight the importance of advancing beyond traditional process optimization to address the complexities of real-world wastewater treatment, contributing to the development of unconventional and more sustainable treatment technologies and closed-loop industrial solutions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":443,"journal":{"name":"Water Research","volume":"280 ","pages":"Article 123504"},"PeriodicalIF":11.4,"publicationDate":"2025-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143627773","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Leveraging primary effluent- and glycerol-driven partial denitrification-anammox within a pilot-scale tertiary step-feed moving bed biofilm reactor treating high-rate activated sludge systems effluent","authors":"Yewei Sun ,&nbsp;Mojtaba Farrokh Shad ,&nbsp;Bruce Mansell ,&nbsp;Michael Liu ,&nbsp;Patricia Hsia ,&nbsp;Ariana Coracero ,&nbsp;Raymond Tsai ,&nbsp;Bryce Danker ,&nbsp;Yian Sun ,&nbsp;Zhangtong Liao ,&nbsp;Zhi-Wu Wang ,&nbsp;Wendell O. Khunjar ,&nbsp;Paul Pitt ,&nbsp;Ron Latimer","doi":"10.1016/j.watres.2025.123505","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.watres.2025.123505","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study investigated the possibility of utilizing primary effluent (PE) carbon as an internal carbon source to drive tertiary partial denitrification-anammox (PdNA) for treating high-rate activated sludge (HRAS) system effluent, so as to offset the consumption of external carbon such as glycerol. This pilot study was conducted in a tertiary step-feed moving bed biofilm reactor (MBBR) over 478 days, using full-scale HRAS secondary effluent as the influent. Unlike most PdNA applications that rely on the expensive supplemental carbon like methanol or glycerol, this study is the first to demonstrate that PE carbon can be utilized as a naturally available carbon source within wastewater to drive PdNA. By taking advantage of this free internal carbon source to driven PdNA, 63% to 74% savings in PE carbon consumption and ∼36% offset in glycerol consumption were achieved. Additionally, glycerol-driven PdNA further reduced both supplemental carbon and aeration energy demands by 70% and 18%. Mechanistic insights from in-situ and ex-situ batch tests revealed that the PE-driven PdNA was facilitated by an anammox-driven nitrite sink, a novel observation that allowed stable PdNA performance without nitrite accumulation. Furthermore, batch tests indicated that endogenous respiration could support PdNA. These findings highlight the potential of applying PE-driven PdNA in full-scale facilities, ushering in a new era of mainstream anammox applications in wastewater treatment, as PdNA is no longer reliant on costly external carbon addition.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":443,"journal":{"name":"Water Research","volume":"280 ","pages":"Article 123505"},"PeriodicalIF":11.4,"publicationDate":"2025-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143631189","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Particulate methane monooxygenase and cytochrome P450-induced reactive oxygen species facilitate 17β-estradiol biodegradation in a methane-fed biofilm","authors":"Wenkang Lu ,&nbsp;Xu Guo ,&nbsp;Yunshuo Wu ,&nbsp;Shengjie Sun ,&nbsp;Qingqing Wang ,&nbsp;Jianhua Guo ,&nbsp;He-Ping Zhao ,&nbsp;Chun-Yu Lai","doi":"10.1016/j.watres.2025.123501","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.watres.2025.123501","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Methane-fed biosystems have shown great potential for degrading various organic micropollutants, yet underlying molecular degradation mechanisms remain largely unexplored. In this study, we uncover the critical role of biogenic reactive oxygen species (ROS) in driving the degradation of 17β-estradiol (E₂) within a methane-fed biofilm reactor. Metagenomic analyses confirm that aerobic methanotrophs, specifically <em>Methylococcus</em> and <em>Methylomonas</em>, are responsible for the efficient degradation of E₂, achieving a degradation rate of 367.7 ± 8.3 μg/L/d. ROS scavenging in conjunction with enzyme inhibition experiments indicate that particulate methane monooxygenase (pMMO) and cytochrome P450 monooxygenase (CYP450) could generate hydroxyl radicals (•OH), which are the primary ROS involved in E₂ degradation. Molecular dynamics simulations suggest that E₂ can enter the active catalytic site of pMMO through electrostatic attraction. Four amino acid residues are found to form stable hydrogen bonds with E₂, with a high binding free energy, indicating a high affinity for the substrate. Additionally, density functional theory calculations combined with transformation product analysis reveal that •OH targets carbon atoms on the benzene ring and the hydroxyl group attaches to the cyclopentane ring, primarily through hydrogen abstraction and hydroxylation reactions. This work provides critical insights into the mechanisms of E₂ biodegradation in methane-fed systems and highlights the potential for optimizing microbial pathways to enhance the degradation of organic micropollutants from contaminated water.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":443,"journal":{"name":"Water Research","volume":"280 ","pages":"Article 123501"},"PeriodicalIF":11.4,"publicationDate":"2025-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143618575","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}