Unraveling the residual sludge-mediated waste transformation and physiological regulation mechanism of Tetradesmus obliquus

The accumulation of residual sludge as process waste from water treatment engineering needs to be addressed urgently. Tetradesmus obliquus is an important algal species in the field of wastewater treatment. In this study, T. obliquus was cultured in different sludge extract to determine its ability to utilize wastes from the liquid phase and convert them into biomass, and to analyze the response of the microalgae to toxic stress using proteomics. The results showed that the sludge extract medium was superior to the BG11 medium in accumulating biomass, with dry weights, proteins and polysaccharides at least 1.09, 1.12 and 1.28 times higher than those of BG11 medium. In toxic group, T. obliquus reduced TOC from an initial 426.8±20.0 mg/L to 180.4±8.5 mg/L with a simultaneous 48.4 % reduction in toxicity. Toxic sludge extract produced greater damage to the photosystem of T. obliquus compared to the blank, significantly inhibiting the expression of two photosystem II core proteins, A0A383VSL5 (0.290 down) and A0A383V2Z3 (0.308 down), on day 5. However, these impairments were reversible, and at day 20, the expression of A0A383VSL5 was not inhibited, the inhibitory effect of A0A383V2Z3 (0.575 down) was attenuated. These results fill a gap on the treatment of various types of residual sludge by T. obliquus and provide promising strategies for microalgae treatment of residual sludge, whether non-toxic or toxic.