Science and Education Publishing International Journal of Environmental Bioremediation & Biodegradation 2 4 2014 07 20 An Application of Amplified Ribosomal DNA Restriction Analysis in the Changes of Microbial Community Structure of Industrial Waste Water Treatment 192 196 EN M. Shah Industrial Waste Water Research Laboratory, Division of Applied & Environmental Microbiology, Enviro Technology Limited, Gujarat, India IJEBB2014246 10.12691/ijebb-2-4-6 2014 07 10 2014 07 17 2014 07 20 In the present research we evaluated the suitability of ARDRA method to detect differences in activated sludge bacterial communities fed on domestic or industrial wastewater, and subject to different operational conditions. The ability of this method to detect these differences has been tested in modified Ludzack-Ettinger configurations. Samples from three activated sludge wastewater treatment plants with the MLE configuration were collected for both oxic and anoxic reactors, and ARDRA patterns using double enzyme digestions AluI+MspI were obtained. A matrix of Dice similarity coefficients was calculated and used to compare these restriction patterns. Differences in the community structure due to influent characteristics and temperature could be observed, but not between the oxic and anoxic reactors of each of the three MLE configurations. Other possible applications of ARDRA for detecting and monitoring changes in activated sludge systems are discussed.