Drinking Water Microbiome Project: Is it Time?

Natalie M Hull; Fangqiong Ling; Ameet J Pinto; Mads Albertsen; H Grace Jang; Pei-Ying Hong; Konstantinos T Konstantinidis; Mark LeChevallier; Rita R Colwell; Wen-Tso Liu

doi:10.1016/j.tim.2019.03.011

Drinking Water Microbiome Project: Is it Time?

Trends Microbiol. 2019 Aug;27(8):670-677. doi: 10.1016/j.tim.2019.03.011. Epub 2019 Apr 25.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Civil, Environmental, and Geodetic Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.
² Department of Energy, Environmental, and Chemical Engineering, Washington University in St Louis, St Louis, MO 63130, USA.
³ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
⁴ Department of Chemistry and Bioscience, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark.
⁵ The Water Research Foundation, Denver, CO 80235, USA.
⁶ Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal 23955, Saudi Arabia.
⁷ School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and School of Biological Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA.
⁸ Dr Water Consulting, LLC, Morrison, CO 80465, USA.
⁹ Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, University of Maryland Institute for Applied Computer Studies, College Park, Maryland, and CosmosID, Rockville, MD 20742, USA.
¹⁰ Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. Electronic address: wtliu@illinois.edu.

PMID: 31031092
DOI: 10.1016/j.tim.2019.03.011

Abstract

Now is an opportune time to foster collaborations across sectors and geographical boundaries to enable development of best practices for drinking water (DW) microbiome research, focusing on accuracy and reproducibility of meta-omic techniques (while learning from past microbiome projects). A large-scale coordinated effort that builds on this foundation will enable the urgently needed comprehensive spatiotemporal understanding and control of DW microbiomes by engineering interventions to protect public health. This opinion paper highlights the need to initiate and conduct a large-scale coordinated DW microbiome project by addressing key knowledge gaps and recommends a roadmap for this effort.

Keywords: drinking water; meta-omics; microbial ecology; microbiome.

Publication types

Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.
Review

MeSH terms

Drinking Water / microbiology*
Humans
Microbiota*
Water Microbiology

Substances

Drinking Water