Various types of bacteria can be found in drinking water. In fact, in a glass of clear tap water, thousands of microorganisms are present. Ameet Pinto is an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Northeastern University. He says, “If drinking water doesn’t have bacteria in it, there’s something wrong”. Thus, Pinto’s lab is developing a low-cost microscope and easy-to-follow procedures that will help regulate how water quality is monitored. This will help to figure how much and what kind of bacteria might be present in filtered water. One of the lab procedures involve sequencing the DNA of microbes in a water source. A portable DNA sequencer is present at the lab, which is used on-site to test what kind of bacteria is in the water with immediate results. An upgrade to the current system, this process is quicker since the old one involved bringing samples back to a lab to test them. The old process would take days and doesn’t always represent the full microbial ecosystem of the water.
Pinto is engaged in defining protocols on how to use the DNA sequencer in order to standardise the process. This would help the operators at water utility sites to monitor bacteria levels themselves. However, only a microscope can actually tell us how many of the DNA are present there. Thus, Pinto’s lab is developing a microscope to quantify the bacteria. His lab recently received the Water Research Foundation’s Paul L. Busch award of $100,000, out of which the microscope would cost about $250. He wants to build a tool that is easy to use and cheap to produce so that it is accessible to everyone, whether that person is operating a water utility site or drinking tap water at home.
“It could be in your house, for example, so that you can decide how long to flush the tap after you’ve been away for a month before deciding when the water is safe to drink,” he says.
Shahjadi Jemim Rahman