@article{c97c95a902bf44e0ab0fb9e7657b7efb,
title = "Drinking Water Microbiome Project: Is it Time?",
abstract = "Now is an opportune time to foster collaborations across sectors and geographical boundaries to enable development of best practices for drinking water (DW) microbiome research, focusing on accuracy and reproducibility of meta-omic techniques (while learning from past microbiome projects). A large-scale coordinated effort that builds on this foundation will enable the urgently needed comprehensive spatiotemporal understanding and control of DW microbiomes by engineering interventions to protect public health. This opinion paper highlights the need to initiate and conduct a large-scale coordinated DW microbiome project by addressing key knowledge gaps and recommends a roadmap for this effort.",
keywords = "drinking water, meta-omics, microbial ecology, microbiome",
author = "Hull, {Natalie M.} and Fangqiong Ling and Pinto, {Ameet J.} and Mads Albertsen and Jang, {H. Grace} and Hong, {Pei Ying} and Konstantinidis, {Konstantinos T.} and Mark LeChevallier and Colwell, {Rita R.} and Liu, {Wen Tso}",
note = "Funding Information: N.H. F.L. A.P. and W.L. conceived and outlined the opinion. N.H. drafted the manuscript with contributions from F.L. A.P. P.H. and W.L. G.J. A.P. P.H. K.K. M.A. R.R.C. and M.L. provided critical review and comments on the manuscript. Authors acknowledge support from NSF Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems (CBET) under award number 1701641. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of NSF. Because many discussions at an NSF Workshop held March 12–13, 2018 in Denver, CO (Advancing understanding of Microbiomes in Drinking Water Distribution Systems and Premise Plumbing Using Meta-omics Techniques) informed this opinion, authors would like to acknowledge input of all workshop participants. Funding Information: Figure 3 depicts the roadmap for a large-scale coordinated DWMP with the goal to involve multisector efforts to generate data necessary to link DW microbial ecology with abiotic factors to better understand, monitor, predict, and control DW microbiomes. Phase 1 of the DWMP will start with recruitment of diverse stakeholders across sectors to conduct a comprehensive critical review of existing DW microbiome literature. This could be funded by a workshop/training grant for university laboratories and other stakeholders including utilities/regulators to work together. The effort would focus on the feasibility and applicability of potential methods, experimental comparisons, pros/cons of various approaches, determining what constitutes value-added microbiome data, and meta-analyses of existing longitudinal full-scale/pilot-system data. The outcome of this review would be used to direct investment required for the large-scale coordinated effort, and to guide essential round-robin validation testing to standardize DWMP methodology. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2019 Elsevier Ltd",
year = "2019",
month = aug,
doi = "10.1016/j.tim.2019.03.011",
language = "English",
volume = "27",
pages = "670--677",
journal = "Trends in Microbiology",
issn = "0966-842X",
number = "8",
}