虽然安全和高质量,饮用水可以承载惊人的微生物生物多样性,拆除其“生物学简单”的信念。“在这几年里,我们目睹了科学出版物的指数增长,探索隐藏在饮用水处理厂(DWTP)和饮用水分配系统(DWDS)中的生态。我们专注于在DWTP的制取过程的主要步骤中,来自源水(地下水)的微生物群落会发生什么,位于意大利北部的城市化地区。通过严格的水过滤处理样品以保留甚至最小的环境细菌,然后用高通量DNA测序(HTS)技术分析。我们发现碳过滤器含有微生物群落,在下游播种和塑造水微生物群,在进入的(地下水)微生物群落上引入显著的变化。氯化不会立即影响改变的微生物群。我们还能够正确预测(通过机器学习分析)属于地下水的样本(总体精度为0.71)。但是碳过滤器样品的分配并不可靠,被错误地预测为氯化样品。特定微生物的存在和丰度使我们能够假设它们作为指标的作用。特别是,念珠菌(念珠菌),与属于α变形菌和γ变形菌的微生物一起,表征处理水,但不是生水。一个例外,证实了我们的假设,由过滤器更新下游的样本给出,其组成类似于地下水。波动性分析说明了碳过滤器如何代表一个随着时间的推移而稳定的生态系统,可能具有促进这种特殊微生物群落生存和生长的环境条件。
While safe and of high quality, drinking water can host an astounding biodiversity of microorganisms, dismantling the belief of its \"biological simplicity.\" During the very few years, we are witnessing an exponential growth in scientific publications, exploring the ecology hidden in drinking water treatment plants (DWTPs) and drinking water distribution system (DWDS). We focused on what happens to the microbial communities from source water (groundwater) throughout the main steps of the potabilization process of a DWTP, located in an urbanized area in Northern Italy. Samples were processed by a stringent water filtration to retain even the smallest environmental bacteria and then analyzed with High-Throughput DNA Sequencing (HTS) techniques. We showed that carbon filters harbored a microbial community seeding and shaping water microbiota downstream, introducing a significant variation on incoming (groundwater) microbial community. Chlorination did not instantly affect the altered microbiota. We were also able to correctly predict (through machine learning analysis) samples belonging to groundwater (overall accuracy was 0.71), but the assignation was not reliable with carbon filter samples, which were incorrectly predicted as chlorination samples. The presence and abundance of specific microorganisms allowed us to hypothesize their role as indicators. In particular, Candidatus Adlerbacteria (Parcubacteria), together with microorganisms belonging to Alphaproteobacteria and Gammaproteobacteria, characterized treated water, but not raw water. An exception, confirming our hypothesis, is given by the samples downstream the filters renewal, which had a composition resembling groundwater. Volatility analysis illustrated how carbon filters represented an ecosystem that is stable over time, probably bearing the environmental conditions that promote the survival and growth of this peculiar microbial community.