Keynote talk "Disinfection-mediated selection of the drinking water microbiome"

Most microbes in drinking water do not pose a human health risk, but the presence of pathogenic microbes can have severe public health implications. Hence, nearly all drinking water treatment technologies designed to manage microbial communities are intended to either inactivate, starve, or remove microorganisms during treatment and minimize growth during water distribution. Yet, every liter of drinking water can contain tens of millions of diverse microorganisms. How does the drinking water microbiome persist within the drinking water distribution systems despite chronic disinfectant stress and nutrient deprivation? This talk will present hypotheses based on field data on potential ecological and physiological mechanisms underpinning the persistence (and sometimes proliferation) of the drinking water microbiome. Systematically testing these hypotheses under field-relevant conditions has the potential to shift our approaches to microbial management of drinking water systems from a pathogen-centric to a microbiome-inclusive framework.