FAME Profiling to Trace Sources of Microbial Pollution in Streams

Despite significant progress since the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972, the water quality in the U.S. is still a major concern with nearly 270 thousand miles of rivers, 8 million acres of lakes, and 16 thousand square miles of estuaries being polluted. Microbial water quality is one of the leading water quality issues threatening bodies of water that serve as drinking water sources, recreational environments, and sources of food. Sources of microbial contamination must be identified before effective watershed management and treatment practices can be instituted.

Dr. Metin Duran with the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Villanova University has been conducting laboratory studies researching host-specific differences in the fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) profiles of indicator organisms and has developed a large database containing over 1,700 isolates of total coliform (TC), fecal coliform (FC), Escherichia coli, and Enterococcus using samples from six possible sources of fecal matter: sewage, cow (dairy and beef cattle), poultry, swine, deer, and waterfowl. The high accuracy of this novel process in distinguishing sources of fecal matter when there are known source libraries is significant but the susceptibility of FAME profiles to temporal variations and possible changes in FAME profiles of indicator organisms once they are in their secondary habitat, i.e. the water environment, needs to be tested. Duran is field testing the effectiveness of FAME profiling of microbes from various sources in Chester Creek in southeast Pennsylvania and if FAME profiles are conserved in field environments, the method offers a simpler, lower cost alternative to genotypic methods for tracking microbe sources.