Arginine enhances activity of anammox consortia and process stability with increased nitrogen loading

Cross-feeding based on amino acids metabolism is an important strategy by which anammox bacteria and the co-existing heterotrophs facilitate their own growth and survival. Arginine is one of the necessary amino acids required for bacterial protein biosynthesis but whether adding arginine could benefit growth of anammox bacteria remains unknown. In this study, arginine was supplemented at dose of 5 mg·L⁻¹ to promote the nitrogen removal performance of anammox bioreactors under varied loading rates. The results showed that nitrogen removal efficiency increased by 10.2 % under higher loading rates. Arginine addition substantially simulated the secretion of extracellular proteins and polysaccharides within anammox consortia as a strategy against unfavorable conditions. Canditatus Kuenenia dominated the anammox consortia and their 16S rRNA abundance and anammox-related functional genes were significantly increased by up to 0.42 times and 5.81 times, respectively. The findings of this study provided a feasible strategy to improve the performance of anammox reactors with arginine supplementation.