Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Michigan, USA.
Environ Sci Technol. 2012 Aug 21;46(16):8851-9. doi: 10.1021/es302042t. Epub 2012 Jul 30.
The bacterial community structure of a drinking water microbiome was characterized over three seasons using 16S rRNA gene based pyrosequencing of samples obtained from source water (a mix of a groundwater and a surface water), different points in a drinking water plant operated to treat this source water, and in the associated drinking water distribution system. Even though the source water was shown to seed the drinking water microbiome, treatment process operations limit the source water's influence on the distribution system bacterial community. Rather, in this plant, filtration by dual media rapid sand filters played a primary role in shaping the distribution system bacterial community over seasonal time scales as the filters harbored a stable bacterial community that seeded the water treatment processes past filtration. Bacterial taxa that colonized the filter and sloughed off in the filter effluent were able to persist in the distribution system despite disinfection of finished water by chloramination and filter backwashing with chloraminated backwash water. Thus, filter colonization presents a possible ecological survival strategy for bacterial communities in drinking water systems, which presents an opportunity to control the drinking water microbiome by manipulating the filter microbial community. Grouping bacterial taxa based on their association with the filter helped to elucidate relationships between the abundance of bacterial groups and water quality parameters and showed that pH was the strongest regulator of the bacterial community in the sampled drinking water system.
采用基于 16S rRNA 基因的焦磷酸测序技术，对取自水源（地下水和地表水的混合物）、处理该水源的饮用水厂不同点以及相关饮用水分配系统的样本进行了为期三个季节的饮用水微生物组的细菌群落结构研究。尽管研究表明水源是饮用水微生物组的来源，但处理工艺操作限制了水源对分配系统细菌群落的影响。相反，在该工厂中，双介质快速砂滤器的过滤作用在季节性时间尺度上对分配系统细菌群落的形成起着主要作用，因为过滤器中存在稳定的细菌群落，这些细菌群落通过过滤过程为水处理过程提供了种子。尽管氯胺消毒和氯胺反冲洗水的反冲洗会对出厂水进行消毒，但仍有一些能够在分配系统中存活下来的细菌在滤料上定殖并从滤料中脱落。因此，滤料的定殖为饮用水系统中的细菌群落提供了一种可能的生态生存策略，这为通过操纵滤料微生物群落来控制饮用水微生物组提供了机会。根据与滤料的关联对细菌分类群进行分组有助于阐明细菌群体丰度与水质参数之间的关系，并表明 pH 值是所采样饮用水系统中细菌群落的最强调节剂。
