Sibylle Kalmbach

TL;DR: Three bacterial strains isolated from biofilms of the Berlin drinking water system were characterized with respect to their morphological and physiological properties and their taxonomic position and it is proposed that a new genus, Aquabacterium gen. nov, should be created.

TL;DR: A polyphasic approach involving cultivation, direct viable counts, rRNA-based phylogenetic classification, and in situ probing was applied for the characterization of the dominant microbial population in a municipal drinking water distribution system, demonstrating strains B6 and B8 to be dominant bacterial strains in groundwater and distribution system biofilms.

TL;DR: In situ hybridization with group-specific rRNA-targeted oligonucleotide probes revealed the prevalence of bacteria belonging to the β-subclass of Proteobacteria within the bacterial biofilm populations, and differences in the population composition depended on the surface properties of the substrata.

TL;DR: Drinking water biofilm communities originated from distribution systems in Hamburg, Berlin, Mainz and Stockholm were subjected to a top-to-bottom in situ analysis with rRNA-targeted, fluorescently labeled oligonucleotide probes including beta1–8, specific for drinking water bacteria within the beta-subclass of Proteobacteria.

TL;DR: The results of this investigation show that mycobacteria could not be detected when groundwater was used as raw water source, but were frequently found in bank-filtered drinking water biofilms, indicating that they did not belong to the pathogenic or certain facultative pathogenic species of this genus.