Penicillium Oxalicum XD-3.1 Removes Pharmaceutical Compounds from Hospital Wastewater and Outcompetes Native Bacterial and Fungal Communities in Fluidised Batch Bioreactors

Pharmaceutical active compounds (PhACs) are molecules used for the treatment of physiological disorders that can generate environmental imbalances when discharged into wastewater. In this work, the use of Penicillium oxalicum XD-3.1 as bioremediation tool for the elimination of PhACs in non-sterile real hospital wastewater in batch bench scale bioreactor and its impact on microbial community was evaluated. A quantitative analysis using UHPLC-QToF was performed under three different conditions to determine the elimination of the different (PhACs) by this ascomycetes fungus. On the other hand, the changes on microbial community over time were analysed using Illumina MiSeq sequencing platform and a phylogenetic microarray (PhyloChip). P. oxalicum XD 3.1 was able to reduce the concentration of the majority of the analysed PhACs in 24 h such as ketoprofen, naproxen and paracetamol. Moreover, P. oxalicum inhibited the native fungal populations present in the wastewater, including opportunistic human pathogens such as Mycosphaerella and Drechslera, as well as some bacterial human pathogens belonging to Clostridiaceae and Brucellaceae families. However, important degraders such as Pseudomonadaceae bacteria groups remained in the system, indicating a possible natural consortium formation between fungi and bacteria. These results indicate the possibility to use this system for the removal of PhACs in real applications.