An interesting item from Suzy Hill, an Engineering Innovation Project Manager at United Utilities, in CIWEM’s News pages. Talking to Jo Caird, the Editor of CIWEM’s Environment magazine, she briefly outlines how the Making Microbes Matter project is using metagenomics to analyse and track microbial communities with a view to improving understanding and enhancing treatment performance.
The project is supported by the Water Innovation Fund, and brings together four major UK water companies (United Utilities, Yorkshire, Northumbrian and Anglian Water) with Newcastle University’s Dr Ben Allen and Prof Tom Curtis – well-known to EBNet members as co-Leads of our N2O WG.
The piece highlights several key themes for this WG and others, including nitrous oxide emissions in wastewater treatment, and the role of bioinformatics. It also mentions the concept of ‘national biological infrastructure’ as coined by Tom Curtis – could this even be a reference to the Microbes in Wastewater Treatment video? If you haven’t seen it yet, don’t miss it…
Great to see these ideas gaining currency across the water and wastewater industry. Members of EBNet’s Bioinformatics WG are also contributing to a forthcoming IEA Task 37 report on how microbiome data can provide useful insights for anaerobic digestion processes: expect to hear more on this later this year.
See: How metagenomics could transform wastewater treatment
