ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Aquatic Microbiology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1567992
This article is part of the Research TopicBiofilms in Aquatic Environments and New Strategies for Microbial Biofilm ControlView all articles
Similarity of Drinking Water Biofilm Microbiome Despite Diverse Planktonic Water Community and Quality
Provisionally accepted
- The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
The impact of drinking water quality, in particular the planktonic microbiome, on the bacterial and fungal community composition of biofilms in drinking water infrastructure is explored. Understanding drinking water biofilms is critical as biofilms can degrade water quality and potentially present a public health risk if pathogens are released. Biofilms were developed for 12 months in three state-of-the-art pipe loop facilities installed at water treatment works and hence supplied by distinct treated drinking water and unique planktonic bacterial and fungal microbiomes. Each pipe loop had identical physical conditions, including pipe diameter, material and hydraulic regime (shear stress and turbulence). Despite the different bulk-waters, the bacterial and fungal community composition of the biofilm within each loop were remarkably similar, although in different quantities. The similarity between the biofilms from unique systems, with significantly different planktonic microbiomes, suggests shared selective pressures across the different sites which are independent of the varying water qualities, including planktonic community. This suggests that taking a global view of biofilm microbiome management is potentially feasible and that approaches controlling material or hydraulics may be best way to do this.
Keywords: Drinking water distribution systems, Microbiology, Biofilms, community composition, metabarcoding
Received: 28 Jan 2025; Accepted: 28 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Slater, Fish and Boxall. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Frances Slater, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.