Background
The assessment of the microbial quality of drinking water mainly relies on culture-dependent standard parameters. Technological end methodological developments clearly show that microbial dynamics in aquatic systems are not sufficiently described through legal parameters. There is an increasing body of research on the bacterial community analysis using high throughput sequencing techniques in order to better assess the richness and diversity of microbial communities in the aquatic environment. Within an ongoing national research project (Flowres), we characterize different drinking water (dw) resources with flowcytometric fingerprinting methods. In parallel we further examine the bacterial and partly archaeal community in dw.

Aim of the thesis
Due to low DNA contents in raw drinking water, the sampling procedure should be optimized in order to increase the concentration to acceptable levels for further molecular processing and to compare different methods of preparing samples for high throughput sequencing. Proper sampling, valuable DNA extraction as well as all following preparation steps (PCR and Clean-up of samples) until sequencing are imperative for a good sequencing result. Your work will cover the optimization of sampling, DNA extraction and preparation of NGS.

ALSO: You will get insights into Austrian waterworks and regions with beautiful water springs! You will not only work in the lab, also in the nature!

Where: Institute of Sanitary Engineering and Institute of Food Science in Muthgasse 18

Requirements: Skills in microbiological and molecular biological techniques, food microbiology

Contact: Marija Zunabovic-Pichler marija.zunabovic@boku.ac.at and Konrad Domig konrad.domig@boku.ac.at

Start: Immediately

Duration: 6 months