Bioreactor microbial ecosystems with differentiated methanogenic phenol biodegradation and competitive metabolic pathways unraveled with genome-resolved metagenomics

Background Methanogenic biodegradation of aromatic compounds depends on syntrophic metabolism. However, metabolic enzymes and pathways of uncultured microorganisms and their ecological interactions with methanogenic consortia are unknown because of their resistance to isolation and limited genomic information.