William T Sloan's research while affiliated with University of Glasgow and other places
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Publications (103)
![Fig 3. Neutralism [0,0,0]. (A) Relative abundances of B1, B2 and B3...](publication/366416825/figure/fig2/AS:11431281108852508@1671606188433/Neutralism-0-0-0-A-Relative-abundances-of-B1-B2-and-B3-populations-in-the_Q320.jpg)
![Fig 4. Competition [-,-,-]. (A) Relative abundances of B1, B2 and B3...](publication/366416825/figure/fig3/AS:11431281108842674@1671606188492/Competition---A-Relative-abundances-of-B1-B2-and-B3-populations-in-the_Q320.jpg)
![Fig 5. Commensalism [0,+,+]. (A) Relative abundances of B1, B2 and B3...](publication/366416825/figure/fig4/AS:11431281108872492@1671606188557/Commensalism-0-A-Relative-abundances-of-B1-B2-and-B3-populations-in-the_Q320.jpg)
In microbial communities, the ecological interactions between species of different populations are responsible for the spatial distributions observed in aggregates (granules, biofilms or flocs). To explore the underlying mechanisms that control these processes, we have developed a mathematical modelling framework able to describe, label and quantif...
Anaerobic digestion (AD)-based biogas production mitigates the environmental footprint of organic wastes (e.g., food waste and sewage sludge) and facilitates a circular economy. The work proposed an integrated system where the thermal energy demand of an AD is supplied using an air source heat pump (ASHP). The proposed system is compared to a basel...
Machine learning has been regarded as a promising method to better model thermochemical processes such as gasification. However, their black box nature can limit how much one can trust and learn from the developed models. Here seven different machine learning methods have been adopted to model the gasification of biomass and waste across a wide ran...
A meta-analysis approach was used, to study the microbiomes of biofilms and planktonic communities underpinning microbial electrosynthesis (MES) cells. High-throughput DNA sequencing of 16S rRNA gene amplicons has been increasingly applied to understand MES systems. In this meta-analysis of 22 studies, we find that acetogenic and methanogenic MES c...
The viability and the relative merits of competing biomass and waste gasification schemes depends on a complex mix of interacting factors. Conventional analytical methods that are used to aid decision making rely on a plethora of poorly defined parameters. Here we develop a method that eschews the uncertainty in process representation by using a ma...
Biodiesel has the potential to mitigate the fossil fuel-related carbon emission and energy insecurity challenges. There are limited studies examining the impacts of biodiesel production scales on the environmental impacts, while such information will be valuable for guiding practical system design. This work applied the approach of life cycle asses...
Waste-to-hydrogen (WtH) technologies are proposed as a dual-purpose method for simultaneous non-fossil-fuel based hydrogen production and sustainable waste management. This work applied the life cycle assessment approach to evaluate the carbon saving potential of two main WtH technologies (gasification and fermentation) in comparison to the convent...
In this paper we report the results of the impact of a prebiotic (alpha-MOS supplementation) on microbial communities, using an in vitro simulator of the gut microbial environment of the Atlantic salmon. Our data suggest that Bio-Mos may be of value in salmonid production as it enhances volatile fatty acid production by the microbiota from salmon p...
There is growing evidence that individual bacteria sense and respond to changes in mechanical loading. However, the subtle responses of multispecies biofilms to dynamic fluid shear stress are not well documented because experiments often fail to disentangle any beneficial effects of shear stress from those delivered by convective transport of vital...
Distributed waste-to-hydrogen (WtH) systems are a potential solution to tackle the dual challenges of sustainable waste management and zero emission transport. Here we propose a concept of distributed WtH systems based on gasification and fermentation to support hydrogen fuel cell buses in Glasgow. A variety of WtH scenarios were configured based o...
![FIG 3 FCM count (log[cells/mL]) of the (A) Bdellovibrio predator and...](publication/358808689/figure/fig3/AS:1130846316695552@1646626180460/FCM-count-logcells-mL-of-the-A-Bdellovibrio-predator-and-B-the-Pseudomonas-prey_Q320.jpg)
The rise of antibiotic resistance and the unwanted growth of bacteria is a universally growing problem. Predatory bacteria can be used as a biological alternative to antibiotics because they grow by feeding on other bacteria.
Is it possible to find trends between the parameters that define microbial growth to help us explain the vast microbial diversity? Through an extensive database of kinetic parameters of nitrifiers, we analysed if the dominance of specific populations of nitrifiers could be predicted and explained. We concluded that, in general, higher growth yield...
Biomethane and biofertilizer production by anaerobic co-digestion of organic waste serves a promising method for reducing the environmental footprint of organic waste management. This study evaluated the techno-economic feasibility and environmental impacts of organic waste-to-biomethane development in Glasgow, UK using net present value (NPV) anal...
Background
The aquaculture sector now accounts for almost 50% of all fish for human consumption and is anticipated to provide 62% by 2030. Innovative strategies are being sought to improve fish feeds and feed additives to enhance fish performance, welfare, and the environmental sustainability of the aquaculture industry. There is still a lack of kn...
Mannose-oligosaccharide (MOS) pre-biotics are widely deployed in animal agriculture as immunomodulators as well as to enhance growth and gut health. Their mode of action is thought to be mediated through their impact on host microbial communities and the associated metabolism. Bio-Mos is a commercially available pre-biotic currently used in the agr...
The structure and diversity of all open microbial communities are shaped by individual births, deaths, speciation and immigration events; the precise timings of these events are unknowable and unpredictable. This randomness is manifest as ecological drift in the population dynamics, the importance of which has been a source of debate for decades. T...
Background
Atlantic salmon are a fish species of major economic importance. Innovative strategies are being sought to improve salmon feeds and feed additives to enhance fish performance, welfare, and the environmental sustainability of the aquaculture industry. There is still a lack of knowledge surrounding the importance and functionality of the s...
Background
Atlantic salmon are a fish species of major economic importance. Innovative strategies are being sought to improve salmon feeds and feed additives to enhance fish performance, welfare, and the environmental sustainability of the aquaculture industry. There is still a lack of knowledge surrounding the importance and functionality of the s...
Use of high-throughput sequencing is widespread in efforts to understand the microbial communities in natural and engineered systems. Many built ecosystems, in particular those used for engineered wastewater treatment, have harnessed the metabolic capacity of complex microbial communities for the effective removal and recovery of organic pollutants...
Background
The factors affecting host-pathogen ecology in terms of the microbiome remain poorly studied. Chickens are a key source of protein with gut health heavily dependent on the complex microbiome which has key roles in nutrient assimilation and vitamin and amino acid biosynthesis. The chicken gut microbiome may be influenced by extrinsic prod...
Lacking a peptidoglycan cell wall, mycoplasmas are the smallest self-replicating life forms. Members of this bacterial genus are known to parasitise a wide array of metazoans including vertebrates. Whilst much research has been significant targeted at parasitic mammalian mycoplasmas, very little is known about their role in other vertebrates. In th...
Background
The factors affecting host-pathogen ecology in terms of the microbiome remain poorly studied. Chickens are a key source of protein with gut health heavily dependent on the complex microbiome which has key roles in nutrient assimilation and vitamin and amino acid biosynthesis. The chicken gut microbiome may be influenced by extrinsic prod...
Background
The factors affecting host-pathogen ecology in terms of the microbiome remain poorly studied. Chickens are a key source of protein with gut health heavily dependent on the complex microbiome which has key roles in nutrient assimilation and vitamin and amino acid biosynthesis. The chicken gut microbiome may be influenced by extrinsic prod...
Background:
Dirty panicle disease (DPD) caused by several fungal phytopathogens results in damage and depreciation of rice seeds. Unhealthy rice seeds with DPD are potent reservoirs of pathogens and unable to be used as seed stock as they can spread the disease in the paddy fields leading to the severe loss of rice yield and quality. In this study...
An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.
A way to defeat antimicrobial resistance (AMR) crisis is to supply novel drugs to the pharmaceutical industry. This effort leads to a global call for seeking the beneficial microbes from underexplored habitats. To support this call, we isolated Streptomyces sp. TM32 from the rhizosphere soil of a medicinal plant, turmeric (Curcuma longa L.). TM32 e...
Listeriosis is an important food-borne disease responsible for high rates of morbidity and mortality. L. monocytogenes has been the cause of several foodborne outbreaks and its ability to adapt and survive in a wide range of environmental conditions makes eradication difficult. Many L. monocytogenes strains are avirulent but have the ability to inc...
A major class of chlorine disinfection by-products in water treatment and distribution systems is the trihalomethanes. When they occur at high concentration in drinking water they may cause serious problems to human health. Little is known about the capacity of bacterial species that are endemic to drinking water to affect the fate of those chlorin...
To meet future climate change targets, it may become necessary to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate and scale. This paper investigates a new potential strategy: the application of the thermal mountain effect to artificially increase rainfall in desert regions and transform such regions into a vegetated state, thus s...
In completely insular microbial communities, evolution of community structure cannot be shaped by the immigration of new members. Also, when those communities are run in steady‐state, the influence of environmental factors on their assembly is reduced. Therefore, one would expect similar community structures under steady‐state conditions. Yet, in p...
Bacterial motility is one important factor that affects biofilm formation. In drinking water there are key bacteria in aggregation, whose biology acts to enhance the formation of biofilms. However, it is unclear whether the motility of these key bacteria is an important factor for the interactions between bacteria in drinking water, and, subsequent...
Biofilms are found at the inner surfaces of drinking water pipes and, therefore, it is essential to understand biofilm processes to control their formation. Hydrodynamics play a crucial role in shaping biofilms. Thus, knowing how biofilms form, develop and disperse under different flow conditions is critical in the successful management of these sy...
Background:
Amplicon sequencing methods targeting the 16S rRNA gene have been used extensively to investigate microbial community composition and dynamics in anaerobic digestion. These methods successfully characterize amplicons but do not distinguish micro-organisms that are actually responsible for the process. In this research, the archaeal and...
Background
Synthetic organism-based biotechnologies are increasingly being proposed for environmental applications, such as in situ sensing. Typically, the novel function of these organisms is delivered by compiling genetic fragments in the genome of a chassis organism. To behave predictably, these chassis are designed with reduced genomes that min...
Tremendous advancement in high-throughput sequencing has lead to great improvement in studying microbial communities. The major goal is to understand composition and functional diversity. Bioin- formatics pipelines in combination with statistical methods are used to evaluate and analyse community data so that it can be turned into biological insigh...
The structure of biofilms in drinking water systems is influenced by the interplay between biological and physical processes. Bacterial aggregates in bulk fluid are important in seeding biofilm formation on surfaces. In simple pure and co-cultures, certain bacteria, including Methylobacterium, are implicated in the formation of aggregates. However,...
By directly monitoring single cell growth in a microfluidic platform, we interrogated genome-deletion effects in Escherichia coli strains. We compared the growth dynamics of a wild type strain with a clean genome strain, and their derived mutants at the single-cell level. A decreased average growth rate and extended average lag time were found for...
Although biofilms represent one of the dominant forms of life in aqueous environments, our understanding of the assembly and development of their microbial communities remains relatively poor. In recent years, several studies have addressed this and have extended the concepts of succession theory in classical ecology into microbial systems. From th...
Rarefaction curves [rarefy(), R Vegan] for all samples in the sample set grouped by bioreactor type: 1-D laboratory-scale (red), 3-D laboratory-scale (green), and full-scale FSB (blue). Curves show saturation is not reached for any sample sequenced.
Studies investigating the feasibility of new, or improved, biotechnologies, such as wastewater treatment digesters, inevitably start with laboratory-scale trials. However, it is rarely determined whether laboratory-scale results reflect full-scale performance or microbial ecology. The Expanded Granular Sludge Bed (EGSB) bioreactor, which is a high-...
In this study, we co-analyze all available 16S rRNA gene sequencing studies from bulk drinking water samples in full-scale drinking water distribution systems. Consistent with expectations, we find that Proteobacteria, particularly Alpha- and Betaproteobacteria, dominate drinking water bacterial communities irrespective of origin of study and prese...
The importance of microbial communities (MCs) cannot be overstated. MCs underpin the biogeochemical cycles of the earth's soil, oceans and the atmosphere, and perform ecosystem functions that impact plants, animals and humans. Yet our ability to predict and manage the function of these highly complex, dynamically changing communities is limited. Bu...
High-throughput and deep DNA sequencing, particularly amplicon sequencing, is being increasingly utilized to reveal spatial and temporal dynamics of bacterial communities in drinking water systems. Whilst the sampling and methodological biases associated with PCR and sequencing have been studied in other environments, they have not been quantified...
Many promising hydrogen technologies utilising hydrogenase enzymes have been slowed by the fact that most hydrogenases are extremely sensitive to O2. Within the group 1 membrane-bound NiFe hydrogenase, naturally occurring tolerant enzymes do exist, and O2 tolerance has been largely attributed to changes in iron–sulphur clusters coordinated by diffe...
This paper physically and numerically models the influence of biofilms on heavy metal removal in a gravel filter. Experimental flow columns were constructed to determine the removal of Cu, Pb and Zn by gabbro and dolomite gravel lithologies with and without natural biofilm from SuDS. Breakthrough experiments showed that, whilst abiotic gravel filte...
Transport study of nanoparticle (NP) through matrix flow dominated aquifer sand and soils have significant influence in natural systems. To quantify the transport behaviour, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was used to image the iron oxide based nanoparticle, Molday ION (carboxyl terminated) through saturated sandstone rock core. T2-weighted images...
In all but the most sterile environments bacteria will reside in fluid being transported through conduits and some of these will attach and grow as biofilms on the conduit walls. The concentration and diversity of bacteria in the fluid at the point of delivery will be a mix of those when it entered the conduit and those that have become entrained i...
With read lengths of currently up to 2 × 300 bp, high throughput and low sequencing costs Illumina's MiSeq is becoming one of the most utilized sequencing platforms worldwide. The platform is manageable and affordable even for smaller labs. This enables quick turnaround on a broad range of applications such as targeted gene sequencing, metagenomics...
Significance
Microbial communities orchestrate most biogeochemical processes on Earth. In streams and rivers, surface-attached and matrix-enclosed biofilms dominate microbial life. Despite the relevance of these biofilms for ecosystem processes (e.g., metabolism and nutrient cycling), it remains unclear how features inherent to stream and river net...
Unlabelled:
Bacterial communities migrate continuously from the drinking water treatment plant through the drinking water distribution system and into our built environment. Understanding bacterial dynamics in the distribution system is critical to ensuring that safe drinking water is being supplied to customers. We present a 15-month survey of ba...
We thank Kawada for the comments1 on our article.2 We recognize the importance of lipids in outcomes. We had only baseline total cholesterol available in a subset of patients, and it was not associated with either all-cause or cardiovascular mortality. Furthermore, incorporation of baseline total cholesterol in …
We investigated the response of the dominant bacterial taxa in gravelly sand to the addition of biochar and/or mixtures of volatile petroleum hydrocarbons (VPHs) using denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) and sequencing of cut bands. Biochar addition alone had only weak effects on the soil bacterial community composition in batch study sa...
Current guidelines recommend early referral and initiation of intensive cardiovascular (CV) risk reduction in individuals with a positive family history of coronary heart disease (CHD). We hypothesized that a family history of premature CHD and stroke [CV disease (CVD)] would lead to earlier referral of hypertensive patients to secondary care clini...
Streams and rivers form conspicuous networks on the Earth and are among nature's most effective integrators. Their dendritic structure reaches into the terrestrial landscape and accumulates water and sediment en route from abundant headwater streams to a single river mouth. The prevailing view over the last decades has been that biological diversit...
Chloride (Cl(-)) is the major extracellular anion in the body, accompanying sodium (Na(+)), and is primarily derived from dietary sources. Data suggest that increased dietary Cl(-) intake increases blood pressure, yet paradoxically, higher serum Cl(-) appears associated with lower mortality and cardiovascular risk. This implies that serum Cl(-) als...
Recent evidence indicates that long-term visit-to-visit blood pressure variability (BPV) may be an independent cardiovascular risk predictor. The implication of this variability in hypertension clinical practice is unclear. BPV as average real variability (ARV) was calculated in 14 522 treated patients with hypertension in 4 time frames: year 1 (Y1...
The movement of fluvial sediment shapes our rivers. Understanding
sediment entrainment has been a goal of hydraulic engineers for almost a
century. Previous sediment entrainment models have been informed by
laboratory experiments using grains that were free from biological
material. In natural river settings, however, sediments are invariably
cover...
Uric acid may have a role in the development of hypertension and renal dysfunction. We explored the relationship among longitudinal blood pressure, renal function, and cardiovascular outcomes in a large cohort of patients with treated hypertension. We used data from the Glasgow Blood Pressure Clinic database. Patients with a baseline measure of ser...
Very few studies have looked at longitudinal intraindividual blood pressure responses to weather conditions. There are no data to suggest that specific response to changes in weather will have an impact on survival. We analyzed >169 000 clinic visits of 16 010 Glasgow Blood Pressure Clinic patients with hypertension. Each clinic visit was mapped to...
