Abstract
The quinone profiles of microbial biomass samples from wastewater and natural aquatic environments were studied. A soil sample was also analyzed for comparison. Attempts were made to perform numerical analyses on these profiles by using three parameters, the microbial divergence index (MDq), the bioenergetic divergence index (BDq), and the dissimilarity index (D), and the algorithm of the neighbor-joining method was used to make clustering trees based on D value matrix data. For these purposes, a new personal computer program named “BioCLUST” was developed. The neighbor-joining dendrograms were useful for the grouping of different microbial communities based on D value matrix data. Also, the communities could be classified effectively by plotting MDq data against BDq values. The numerical analysis indicated that sewage activated sludges formed a tight cluster independent of the location of plants and scale of reactors. This was also the case for influent raw sewage. Sewage microbial mats and river water were located in a group with the raw sewage cluster as the sister group. The soil and lake showed their respective independent lines. The use of our new program should facilitate microbial community analyses based on quinone patterns.
