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Combining physicochemical properties and microbiome data to evaluate the water quality of South African drinking water production plants

Anthropogenic activities in catchments used for drinking water production largely contaminates source waters, and this may impact the quality of the final drinking water product. These contaminants may also affect taxonomic and functional profiles of the bacterial communities in the drinking water....

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Autores principales: Maguvu, Tawanda E., Bezuidenhout, Cornelius C., Kritzinger, Rinaldo, Tsholo, Karabo, Plaatjie, Moitshepi, Molale-Tom, Lesego G., Mienie, Charlotte M., Coertze, Roelof D.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7425920/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32790793
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0237335
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author Maguvu, Tawanda E.
Bezuidenhout, Cornelius C.
Kritzinger, Rinaldo
Tsholo, Karabo
Plaatjie, Moitshepi
Molale-Tom, Lesego G.
Mienie, Charlotte M.
Coertze, Roelof D.
author_facet Maguvu, Tawanda E.
Bezuidenhout, Cornelius C.
Kritzinger, Rinaldo
Tsholo, Karabo
Plaatjie, Moitshepi
Molale-Tom, Lesego G.
Mienie, Charlotte M.
Coertze, Roelof D.
author_sort Maguvu, Tawanda E.
collection PubMed
description Anthropogenic activities in catchments used for drinking water production largely contaminates source waters, and this may impact the quality of the final drinking water product. These contaminants may also affect taxonomic and functional profiles of the bacterial communities in the drinking water. Here, we report an integrated insight into the microbiome and water quality of four water treatment plants (NWC, NWE, WCA and NWG) that supply portable water to communities in South Africa. A new scoring system based on combined significant changes of physicochemical parameters and microbial abundance from raw to treated water was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the treatment plants at water purification. Physicochemical parameters which include total soluble solids, turbidity, pH, nitrites and phosphorus among others, were measured in source, treated, and distributed water. There were general statistically significant (P ≤ 0.05) differences between raw and treated water, demonstrating the effectiveness of the purification process. Illumina sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene was used for taxonomic profiling of the microbial communities and this data was used to infer functional attributes of the communities. Structure and composition of the bacterial communities differed significantly (P < 0.05) among the treatment plants, only NWE and NWG showed no significant differences (P > 0.05), this correlated with the predicted functional profile of the microbial communities obtained from Phylogenetic Investigation of Communities by Reconstruction of Observed States (PICRUSt), as well as the likely pollutants of source water. Bacteroidetes, Chlorobi and Fibrobacteres significantly differed (P < 0.05) between raw and distributed water. PICRUSt inferred a number of pathways involved in the degradation of xenobiotics such as Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, atrazine and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. More worryingly, was the presence of pathways involved in beta-lactam resistance, potential pathogenic Escherichia coli infection, Vibrio cholerae infection, and Shigellosis. Also present in drinking and treated water were OTUs associated with a number of opportunistic pathogens.
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spelling pubmed-74259202020-08-20 Combining physicochemical properties and microbiome data to evaluate the water quality of South African drinking water production plants Maguvu, Tawanda E. Bezuidenhout, Cornelius C. Kritzinger, Rinaldo Tsholo, Karabo Plaatjie, Moitshepi Molale-Tom, Lesego G. Mienie, Charlotte M. Coertze, Roelof D. PLoS One Research Article Anthropogenic activities in catchments used for drinking water production largely contaminates source waters, and this may impact the quality of the final drinking water product. These contaminants may also affect taxonomic and functional profiles of the bacterial communities in the drinking water. Here, we report an integrated insight into the microbiome and water quality of four water treatment plants (NWC, NWE, WCA and NWG) that supply portable water to communities in South Africa. A new scoring system based on combined significant changes of physicochemical parameters and microbial abundance from raw to treated water was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the treatment plants at water purification. Physicochemical parameters which include total soluble solids, turbidity, pH, nitrites and phosphorus among others, were measured in source, treated, and distributed water. There were general statistically significant (P ≤ 0.05) differences between raw and treated water, demonstrating the effectiveness of the purification process. Illumina sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene was used for taxonomic profiling of the microbial communities and this data was used to infer functional attributes of the communities. Structure and composition of the bacterial communities differed significantly (P < 0.05) among the treatment plants, only NWE and NWG showed no significant differences (P > 0.05), this correlated with the predicted functional profile of the microbial communities obtained from Phylogenetic Investigation of Communities by Reconstruction of Observed States (PICRUSt), as well as the likely pollutants of source water. Bacteroidetes, Chlorobi and Fibrobacteres significantly differed (P < 0.05) between raw and distributed water. PICRUSt inferred a number of pathways involved in the degradation of xenobiotics such as Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, atrazine and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. More worryingly, was the presence of pathways involved in beta-lactam resistance, potential pathogenic Escherichia coli infection, Vibrio cholerae infection, and Shigellosis. Also present in drinking and treated water were OTUs associated with a number of opportunistic pathogens. Public Library of Science 2020-08-13 /pmc/articles/PMC7425920/ /pubmed/32790793 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0237335 Text en © 2020 Maguvu et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Maguvu, Tawanda E.
Bezuidenhout, Cornelius C.
Kritzinger, Rinaldo
Tsholo, Karabo
Plaatjie, Moitshepi
Molale-Tom, Lesego G.
Mienie, Charlotte M.
Coertze, Roelof D.
Combining physicochemical properties and microbiome data to evaluate the water quality of South African drinking water production plants
title Combining physicochemical properties and microbiome data to evaluate the water quality of South African drinking water production plants
title_full Combining physicochemical properties and microbiome data to evaluate the water quality of South African drinking water production plants
title_fullStr Combining physicochemical properties and microbiome data to evaluate the water quality of South African drinking water production plants
title_full_unstemmed Combining physicochemical properties and microbiome data to evaluate the water quality of South African drinking water production plants
title_short Combining physicochemical properties and microbiome data to evaluate the water quality of South African drinking water production plants
title_sort combining physicochemical properties and microbiome data to evaluate the water quality of south african drinking water production plants
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7425920/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32790793
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0237335
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