Microbial Source Tracking Approaches for Characterization of Watersheds and Environmental Waters
A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Water Quality and Contamination".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (25 August 2021) | Viewed by 457
Special Issue Editor
Interests: water microbiology; environmental microbiology; microbial source tracking; microbial ecology; bioremediation
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Due to the widespread and persistent occurrence of fecal contamination in environmental waters, microbial source tracking (MST) continues to be an active area of research and an important tool for delineating the source(s) of this contamination. Numerous qPCR-based approaches increase both the accuracy and speed of source detection, which can be especially useful in the case of specific sources of contamination (e.g., humans) or during natural disasters or emergencies (e.g., flooding) when rapid results are needed. However, environmental waters and watersheds often receive contaminants from a variety of sources, including many sources for which specific qPCR markers are not available. Other approaches, such as microbiome DNA sequencing, offer the potential to simultaneously determine the source contributions of multiple sources and more comprehensively characterize sources in these complex systems. Furthermore, the integration of MST with quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA) and epidemiology may strengthen conclusions and applications. This Special Issue seeks to highlight the potential and limitations of these various MST approaches for characterizing fecal sources in watersheds and other environmental waters.
Prof. Dr. Terry J. Gentry
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- Microbial source tracking
- Bacterial source tracking
- MST
- Fecal indicator
- qPCR marker
- Water microbiome
