ANALYSIS OF WATER BIOFILM MICROBIOMES GROWN IN ROTATING ANNULAR BIOREACTORS

To study biofilm growth and the microbial ecology of biofilms, rotating annular reactors were seeded with biofilms flushed from a water distribution system located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. When biofilm thickness reached steady-state, biofilms were harvested by sonication, stomaching, bead-beating, and manual scraping to assess the impact of different recovery methods on downstream analyses. High-throughput sequencing of 16S rRNA gene amplicons was used to analyze the biofilm bacterial microbiome.