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Pyrosequencing analysis of bacterial communities in biofilms from different pipe materials in a city drinking water distribution system of East China

Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology volume 99, pages 10713–10724 (2015)Cite this article

Abstract

Biofilms in drinking water distribution systems (DWDSs) could cause several types of problems, such as the deterioration of water quality, corrosion of pipe walls, and potential proliferation of opportunistic pathogens. In this study, ten biofilm samples from different pipe materials, including ductile cast iron pipe (DCIP), gray cast iron pipe (GCIP), galvanized steel pipe (GSP), stainless steel clad pipe (SSCP), and polyvinyl chloride (PVC), were collected from an actual DWDS to investigate the effect of pipe material on bacterial community. Real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) and culture-based method were used to quantify bacteria. 454 pyrosequencing was used for bacterial community analysis. The results showed that the numbers of total bacteria and culturable heterotrophic bacteria from iron pipes were higher than that in PVC, while the numbers of Shigella and vibrios were low in biofilms from iron pipes. Bacterial community analysis showed that Hyphomicrobium or Desulfovibrio were the predominant microorganism in iron pipes, whereas Sphingomonas or Pseudomonas were dominant in other types of pipe. This study revealed differences in bacterial communities in biofilms among different pipe materials, and the results were useful for pipeline material selection in DWDSs.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Key Technology R&D Program (no. 2012BAJ25B07).

The ethical statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058, China

    Hongxing Ren, Wei Wang, Yan Liu, Shuai Liu, Liping Lou, Liusong Fu & Baolan Hu

  2. College of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058, China

    Jingqing Liu

  3. Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, 310053, China

    Dongqing Cheng

  4. Shaoxing Water Environmental Science Institute Co. Ltd, Shaoxing, 312000, China

    Xiaofang He, Xiaoyan Zhou & Shangde Qiu

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  1. Hongxing Ren
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Correspondence to Jingqing Liu or Baolan Hu.

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Ren, H., Wang, W., Liu, Y. et al. Pyrosequencing analysis of bacterial communities in biofilms from different pipe materials in a city drinking water distribution system of East China. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 99, 10713–10724 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-015-6885-6

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