(30e) Microbial Community Profile Versus Water Quality in Urban Watersheds

Microbial community profiles can serve as an indicator for unbran water quality. The aim of this study was to gain insight into bacterial diversity and infer water quality based on selected operational taxonomic units (OTUs). Here we report bacterial communities of 12 watersheds sampled at different frequencies from year 2013 to 2016, were characterized by sequencing the V4 to V5 regions of 16S rRNA genes using 454 pyrosequencing and paired-end sequencing platforms. An nMDS plot of all samples revealed that bacterial communities of the same watershed tended to cluster together and a few watersheds shared similar communities. Effects of temporal variation were more pronounced on bacterial communities within watersheds (P < 0.01; 2-Factor PERMANOVA) than spatial variation. Cyanobacteria of Microcystis and Cylindrospermopsis dominated certain watersheds that tended to have algal blooms. Pairwise correlation of gut and sewage-associated OTUs revealed a strong positive correlation among Enterobacter, Klebsiella and Escherichia and Clostridium sensu stricto 8, suggesting that presence of these taxa as possible indicators of impairment. A comparison of the abundances of 13 potential antibiotic resistant bacteria, revealed four watersheds with samples that correlated with higher abundances of potential antibiotic resistant bacteria compared to the other watersheds. Thus microbial community determined by high-throughput sequencing in conjunction with qPCR can be used to indicate quality of water in urban watersheds.