Abstract
The purpose of this research project is to investigate the population and activity of bacteriophage in Chicagoland waterways with the ultimate goal of treating bacteria‐polluted water with their respective phage counterparts. The focus waterway in this study is the Tinley Creek: a small waterway that flows through residential areas, forest preserves, and industrial areas, eventually flowing into a major channel that carries treated wastewater. In our preliminary research, we have used phage amplification, absorbance readings, and metagenomic analysis to show that the presence of phage in a population greatly shapes the growth patterns of bacteria in that population. Our particular bacteria of focus has been Klebsiella oxytoca, a member of the family Enterobacteriaceae and an opportunistic human pathogen. K. oxytoca is present in the Tinley Creek. Our treatment of wild bacteria populations has been focused on using K. oxytoca phage as well as a mixed population of wild phage from the Tinley Creek. We are scaling up our tests to larger replications of the ecosystem to examine how microbial populations respond to phage treatment. Our research suggests that treating polluted waterways with phage may be a viable means to improve water in urban waterways.
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