Nico Boon

Failure of the ammonia oxidation process in two pharmaceutical wastewater treatment plants is linked to shifts in the bacterial communities.

Aims:u2002 To investigate whether two different wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) – treating the same pharmaceutical influent – select for a different bacterial and/or ammonia oxidizing bacterial (AOB) community.

Online flow cytometric monitoring of microbial water quality in a full-scale water treatment plant

The ever-increasing need for high-quality drinking and process waters, and growing public awareness about possible contamination, drive efforts for the further development of automated control of water treatment plants. For example, membrane filtration processes and reverse osmosis in particular are generally regarded as a safe barrier for inorganic, organic, and microbial contamination. Yet, to ensure the final water quality and to increase the confidence of the end-user, intensive and preferably online monitoring should be further implemented as an early-warning tool to control membrane integrity and to prevent microbial regrowth in the distributing network. In this paper, we test the applicability of flow cytometry and cytometric fingerprinting for a full-scale water treatment plant. We demonstrate in a full-scale water treatment plant that flow cytometry can be used as online monitoring tool and that changes in water quality can be observed, which are not monitored by commonly used online quality parameters. Furthermore, we illustrate with ultrafiltration that process conditions impact the flow cytometric cell counts.Bacterial monitoring: Let it flowFlow cytometry can be used as an online, automated tool to monitor water quality in full-scale water treatment plants. The presence of bacteria in high concentrations in water leads to the unwanted growth of biofilms, which can damage water treatment equipment through microbiologically influenced corrosion. Biofilms can also host pathogenic bacteria, leading to water contamination upon their shedding. Monitoring microbial communities in water treatment plants is thus crucial, and a team led by Bart De Gusseme at Ghent University in Belgium demonstrate that online flow cytometry is capable of achieving this in high throughput and at single-cell resolution. Monitoring at different stages of the treatment plant, their method provides important insights into microbiological dynamics that are unattainable through commonly used online quality parameters, and additionally finds that bacterial concentrations are directly related to process operations.

P694 Chronic cigarette smoke exposure alters the murine gut microbiome

Background The microbiome plays a crucial role in maintaining intestinal homeostasis. Disruption of this homeostatic environment leads to destabilisation of the gut immune system and aberrant immune responses against harmless microbiota, which may be involved in the development of Crohn’s disease (CD). The most prominent environmental risk factor for CD is smoking. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate the influence of cigarette smoke on the microbiome, in particular the mucosaadherent microbiota, and how this is linked to changes in mucin production.