title: Characterization of bacterial community dynamics in a full-scale drinking water treatment plant.
abstract: Understanding the spatial and temporal dynamics of microbial communities in drinking water systems is vital to securing the microbial safety of drinking water. The objective of this study was to comprehensively characterize the dynamics of microbial biomass and bacterial communities at each step of a full-scale drinking water treatment plant in Beijing, China. Both bulk water and biofilm samples on granular activated carbon (GAC) were collected over 9months. The proportion of cultivable cells decreased during the treatment processes, and this proportion was higher in warm season than cool season, suggesting that treatment processes and water temperature probably had considerable impact on the R2A cultivability of total bacteria. 16s rRNA gene based 454 pyrosequencing analysis of the bacterial community revealed that Proteobacteria predominated in all samples. The GAC biofilm harbored a distinct population with a much higher relative abundance of Acidobacteria than water samples. Principle coordinate analysis and one-way analysis of similarity indicated that the dynamics of the microbial communities in bulk water and biofilm samples were better explained by the treatment processes rather than by sampling time, and distinctive changes of the microbial communities in water occurred after GAC filtration. Furthermore, 20 distinct OTUs contributing most to the dissimilarity among samples of different sampling locations and 6 persistent OTUs present in the entire treatment process flow were identified. Overall, our findings demonstrate the significant effects that treatment processes have on the microbial biomass and community fluctuation and provide implications for further targeted investigation on particular bacteria populations.
authors.affiliation: School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China. Electronic address: lcp870000@163.com.
authors.forename: Cuiping
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil and Environment Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
authors.forename: Fangqiong
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Ling
authors.affiliation: School of Food and Chemical Engineering, Beijing Technology and Business University, Beijing 100048, China.
authors.forename: Minglu
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil and Environment Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
authors.forename: Wen-Tso
authors.initials: WT
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Water Quality Monitoring Center, Beijing Waterworks Group, Beijing 100085, China.
authors.forename: Yuxian
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China. Electronic address: wjliu@tsinghua.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Wenjun
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Liu
mesh_terms: D001419:Bacteria / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics*; D000068476:Beijing; D044822:Biodiversity; D018441:Biofilms; D018533:Biomass; D002606:Charcoal; D004269:DNA, Bacterial; D060766:Drinking Water / Q000382:microbiology*; D005374:Filtration; D012336:RNA, Ribosomal, 16S; D014871:Water Microbiology; D018508:Water Purification; D060753:Water Quality
chemical_list: D004269:DNA, Bacterial; D060766:Drinking Water; D012336:RNA, Ribosomal, 16S; D002606:Charcoal
keywords: 454 pyrosequencing; Bacterial community; Dynamics; Flow cytometry; Heterotrophic plate count