Composition and Diversity of Microbial Communities in Drinking Water Distribution Systems

Christopher Anderson and Emily Garner
Wadsworth Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 26506

Presentation Category: Engineering (Poster Presentation)

Student’s Major: Civil and Environmental Engineering

Ensuring the safety of drinking water delivered to the consumer’s tap is paramount to maintaining public health. Despite treatment and disinfection, environmental bacteria that are well-suited to low nutrient conditions typical of drinking water can grow and colonize pipes as water travels from the treatment plant to the consumer. Hence, it is necessary for the scientific community to understand the diverse microbial environment within these distribution systems so that inferences can be made regarding how microbial community structure affects the ability for pathogens to exist in the systems. This research applies bioinformatic techniques to characterize the microbiome within water and biofilm samples collected from four municipal drinking water distribution systems. A bioinformatics software, Quantitative Insights Into Microbial Ecology 2 (QIIME2), was used to assign taxonomic classifications to raw genetic sequencing data targeting the 16S rRNA gene. Alpha and beta diversity were calculated for each sample’s microbial community. Analysis is currently ongoing and future work will focus on identifying bacterial taxa and microbial community characteristics that are associated with the occurrence of pathogens in drinking water.

Funding:

Program/mechanism supporting research/creative efforts: a West Virginia SURE program