5 Benefits of Metagenomics in Wastewater

I’m Leon Downing, Senior Technologist with CH2M, and in that role I work with wastewater process optimization, design, troubleshooting, mainly with biological processes for water reclamation. Within the wastewater industry, the majority of the treatment that we do is driven by biological processes. Historically we had to infer what biology was there, based on microscopy or some special sampling and kind of guessing at who (what microbes) are actually in the system. With metagenomics we can quickly get an assessment of all the bacteria that are present, how we are selecting for them. This allows us to:

• make more efficient designs

• operate more efficiently to intensify our infrastructure

• use less energy

• produce cleaner water

• reduce the burden on ratepayers for wastewater infrastructure.