Characterization of the bacterial community composition in water of drinking water production and distribution systems in Flanders, Belgium

Abstract

The quality of drinking water is influenced by its chemical and microbial composition which in turn may be affected by the source water and the different processes applied in drinking water purification systems. In this study, we investigated the bacterial diversity in different water samples from the production and distribution chain of thirteen drinking water production and distribution systems from Flanders (Belgium) that use surface water or groundwater as source water. Water samples were collected over two seasons from the source water, the processed drinking water within the production facility and out of the tap in houses along its distribution network. 454‐pyrosequencing of 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequences revealed a total of 1,570 species‐level bacterial operational taxonomic units. Strong differences in community composition were found between processed drinking water samples originating from companies that use surface water and other that use groundwater as source water. Proteobacteria was the most abundant phylum in all samples. Yet, several phyla including Actinobacteria were significantly more abundant in surface water while Cyanobacteria were more abundant in surface water and processed water originating from surface water. Gallionella , Acinetobacter , and Pseudomonas were the three most abundant genera detected. Members of the Acinetobacter genus were even found at a relative read abundance of up to 47.5% in processed water samples, indicating a general occurrence of Acinetobacter in drinking water (systems).

Investigating Bacterial and Free-Living Protozoa Diversity in Biofilms of Hot Water Pipes of Apartment Buildings in the City of Riga (Latvia)

“…At phylum-level, we observed several thermophiles, not previously reported for the cold water systems, such as Chloroflexi, Thermi and Thermotogae. Otherwise, however, our findings (Figure 1A) are in line with a number of other systematic studies, exploring the microbial populations of water supply system biofilms (Yu et al, 2010;Baron et al, 2014;Mahapatra et al, 2015;Douterelo et al, 2018;Van Assche et al, 2018), as, in all our biofilm samples, quantitatively, the most abundant phyla were also Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Nitrospirae and Bacteroidetes. Interestingly, it has been previously observed that Proteobacteria was predominant in water samples from households that did not complain about their drinking water quality, whereas those with consumer reports of red water and flowing water, containing elevated levels of iron and manganese, had markedly more sequences representing Nitrospira and Pedomicrobium (in 44/45 of our biofilm samples, on average 0.73% of total).…”

Characterisation of Microbial Community Associated with Different Disinfection Treatments in Hospital hot Water Networks

“…Similar to other studies [31,46], the inlet cold water provided by the municipality presented a common profile in all hospital buildings, characterized by the same predominant phyla and the same predominant environmental ubiquitous genera. The first three predominant phyla in hot water were the same found in cold water samples, which are common constituents of water microbial community [4,47]. Interestingly, hot water networks showed a different microbiological profile at genera level in relation to treatment.…”

A Snapshot of the Global Drinking Water Virome: Diversity and Metabolic Potential Vary with Residual Disinfectant Use

“…As the systems using no residual disinfectant generally had higher conductivities (suggesting a groundwater source), the season of sampling may not have influenced the microbial community of these systems. While temporal trends have been shown in some drinking water distribution systems that primarily used surface water (Pinto et al, 2014;Potgieter et al, 2018;Prest et al, 2016), systems that use a groundwater source exclusively have not exhibited differences in microbial community (Assche et al, 2019;Roeselers et al, 2015). Further studies are necessary to determine the distinct effects of season, water source, and residual disinfectant use on the viral communities of drinking water distribution systems.…”