What is the right biomarker for water quality monitoring?

摘要

In the late 19th century, researchers developed the total plate count method for coliform colony counting as an indicator for pathogen and human health risk. By the mid-20th century, technologies were developed to distinguish total coliform, fecal coliform, and Escherichia coli. In 1986, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommended that E. coli be used as the indicator organism for recreational waters. In 201 2, EPA recommended that both E. coli and enterococci be used for fresh waters. In the last few decades, advances in molecular tools have made it possible to identify and quantify a large number of bacterial species without having to culture them. These molecular tools have several advantages: 1. Since the reaction targets bacterial DNA and RNA, it eliminates false positive and false negative results from culture-based methods (i.e., viable but not culturable [VBNC] microorganisms will be detected by molecular methods but not by culture-based methods).