New article describes marine sediments as an urban reservoir for viable E. coli
The article “Marine sediments are identified as an environmental reservoir for Escherichia coli: Comparing signature-based and novel amplicon sequencing approaches for microbial source tracking” examines how bacterial communities in marine sediments change along a coastline to determine if they are affected by human activity.
Author is Ellinor Frank, PhD student at Sweden Water Research and Lund university, together with Jon Ahlinder, Therese Jephson, Kenneth M Persson, Elisabet Lindberg and Catherine J. Paul.
Highlights
- Marine sediments were identified as an urban reservoir for viable E. coli.
- Custom R scripts were created for curated source tracking based on literature.
- Custom source tracking was more effective at identifying contamination in sediment.
- All approaches identified bacterial sequences associated with treated wastewater.
- Wastewater effluent explained the presence of viable E. coli in urban sediments.
Belongs to project
Evaluation of the bacterial content in sediments in connection to bathing water quality