In September 2004, a microbial source tracking (MST) began in the Wissahickon Creek
watershed in the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as a collaborative effort between Drexel
University and the Philadelphia Water Department. This on-going study aims to determine the
sources of fecal contamination in this 64 square mile watershed, impacting the Wissahickon
Creek flowing through Fairmount Park. Over the last forty years, and particularly since the Clean
Water Act (1972), improvements have been made in the quality of the water system. However,
despite this overall improvement in quality, issues of microbial water contamination remain.
Given the population density and economic influence the river has on the region, there is a need
to continue the improvement of the creek water quality.
The laboratory analyses used to implement this MST program are a combination of phenotypic
and genotypic methods, referred to as a "toolbox" approach. The genotypic method using
polymerase chain reaction (PCR) has been developed, based on previous MST studies. As a
complementary procedure, the phenotypic method currently in use is antibiotic resistance analysis
(ARA) and a standard operating procedure for this method has also been developed. Both of
these methods are termed library-dependent, where bacteria from the water body of interest are
compared to a library of genotypic (i.e. PCR) and phenotypic (i.e. ARA) responses. The decision
to choose library-based methods (which require extensive work to develop the library before
testing water samples) was based on literature reviews of previous MST studies. Includes 13 references, tables, figures.
| Edition : | Vol. - No. |
| File Size : | 1
file
, 2 MB |
| Note : | This product is unavailable in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus |
| Number of Pages : | 25 |
| Published : | 11/01/2008 |
