Microbes, a central role in biomethanation

The GASPOP - "Influence of the Reactor Design and the Operational Parameters on the Dynamics of the Microbial Consortia Involved in the Biomethanation Process" project team held its final meeting on 21 and 22 April 2016 at the premises of the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST). Led by Philippe Delfosse, a researcher at LIST in agricultural sciences and biological processes engineering, the team has highlighted the main results of the research conducted over the past four years.

With an initial target of improving biogas production thanks to a better understanding of the microbial interactions involved in biomethanation - a natural organic matter degradation process also called anaerobic digestion – the final results exceeded the expected objectives:

• Valuable information on unexplained and unpredictable failures and malfunctions in the anaerobic digestion process were collected, such as volatile fatty acids and free ammonia intoxication, and more surprisingly, the potential role of bacteriophages viruses - viruses only affecting bacteria - in the structure of the microbial communities.
• A way has been paved towards the production of biological and molecular markers and probes aiming at a rapid diagnosis of the biomethanation process status and is very promising in providing maintenance of its ongoing functional stability.
• The significant presence of unknown and, until now, undescribed microbial communities, amongst eukaryotes and bacterial and archean organisms, has been discovered.

In view of these results, both the GASPOP project partners and invited researchers at the final meeting suggested the employment of new approaches in the study of the anaerobic digestion process’ microbiota, corresponding with all micro-organisms involved in the natural degradation process of organic matter. Both the culturomics approach and that of metagenomics, permitting respectively the study of the microbiota composition through laboratory cultures and its genetic content, have been brought into focus. New prospects for collaboration are already available for partners around microbial ecology and microbial applications!

GASPOP is a project funded by the National Research Fund – Luxembourg (FNR) and coordinated by LIST in partnership with the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) from the University of Luxembourg, German and French institutions as well as Luxembourg private actors. Learn more about the project on the GASPOP page.

_{Below, some photographies from the GASPOP final meeting}