Two microbial communities of activated sludge in the same municipal wastewater, but treated with different systems, were studied and compared using molecular microbiological approaches. The bacterial 16S rDNA sequences from 124 clones were analyzed, however, the majority of them were not closely related to any known species, and found to belong to 8 different phylogenetic groups and 3 different unidentified groups. The relative frequencies of each group were similar between the two microbial communities. Fingerprinting using terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) showed that the putative Nitrospira-related populations were more diverse and quantitatively higher in the KNR process system than in the other system using a conventional activated sludge process. The relationship between the bacterial community composition and the higher removal efficiency of nitrogen and phosphorus in the KNR process is discussed.