Use of PCR-DGGE Based Molecular Methods to Analyse Microbial Community Diversity and Stability during the Thermophilic Stages of an ATAD Wastewater Sludge Treatment Process as an Aid to Performance Monitoring

Table 5

Comparison of the efficiency of different primer sets to monitor diversity of the bacterial community inhabiting the elevated temperature reactor (ATAD Reactor 2A) at various times of reactor operation (after 4 hours and 23 hours).

Genetic biomarker	DGGE profile analysis of PCR product
	Diversity^a		Number unique band		Total numbers of the unique bands; appearing during operation of Reactor 2A
	Reactor 2; (4 hrs)	Reactor 2; (23 hrs)	Reactor 2; (4 hrs)	Reactor 2; (23 hrs)
16S rRNA gene
V3–V5	19	18	5	2	7
V6–V8	14	12	5	6	11
rpoB	4	6	1	1	2

aTotal number of bands detected on a DGGE lane.