Microorganisms able to rapidly degrade tetrabromobisphenol A (TBBPA) were domesticated in an anaerobic reactor and added to gradually increased concentrations of TBBPA. After 240 days of domestication, the degradation rate reached 96.0% in cultivated batch experiments lasting 20 days. The optimum cultivating temperature and pH were 30 degrees C and 7.0. The bacterial community's composition and diversity in the reactor was studied by comparative analysis with 16S ribosomal DNA clone libraries. Amplified rDNA restriction analysis of 200 clones from the library indicate that the rDNA richness was high (Coverage C 99.5%) and that evenness was not high (Shannon-Weaver index 2.42). Phylogenetic analysis of 63 bacterial sequences from the reactor libraries demonstrated the presence of Betaproteobacteria (33.1%), Gammaproteobacteria (18.7%), Bacteroidetes (13.9%), Firmicutes (11.4%), Chloroflexi (3.6%), Actinobacteria (0.6%), the candidate division TM7 (4.2%) and other unknown, uncultured bacterial groups (14.5%). Comamonas, Achromobacter, Pseudomonas and Flavobacterium were the dominant types. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.