Identifying source of fecal pollution in 19 stream sites of the Lamoille River Basin with MST method and enlarge the ribotyping library to identify E. coli

Library – dependent Microbial Source Tracking (MST) method was used to identify the specific sources of fecal pollution in 19 tributary sites of the Lamoille River, VT. The E. coli were isolated by filtration and identified using a conformational method with MacConkey agar and MUG. Was re- confirmed with the Enterotube II (BD Diagnostic Systems, Heidelberg, Germany). MST was conducted using a Riboprinter (DuPont Qualicon) to generate DNA “barcodes” for the different varieties of E. coli in stream samples and to run library samples of known sources to enlarge the reference library. Most of the E. coli comes from non-human source but with a large percent of human source in the populated areas. The following results examine how consistently genetic barcodes from the same known source species agree.