Objectives

To achieve the goal of the project, the river Tiber (Italy) has been selected as pilot case study for water sampling to simulate different habitats which are influenced differently by anthropogenic pressures. Four areas have been identified.

1) Source area
2) Urban area
3) Industrial area
4) Land use (agriculture area)

For each area, the water sample has been analyzed from different angles i) microbial community sequencing, so it means all microorganisms present in the water sample are going to be sequenced (metagenomics); ii) chemical analysis of emerging pollutants (e.g. pesticides, pharmaceuticals); iii) physical-chemical parameters (pH, nutrients, temperature); iv) Microbial targets enriched for specific bioindicators (pathogens or ecological indicator) by using RNA microarray. Our aim is to link the microbial communities in terms of species and metabolic pathways to water quality (chemical pollutants, nutrients and temperature) to extrapolate “universal indicators” of the water quality which will be used to develop kits such as ready to use plate for qPCR and probes for FISH.