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Microbial source tracking(MST) and quantitative tracking of biological fecal contamination in water environment
Received:August 07, 2015  
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KeyWord:microbial source tracking(MST);biological-source contamination;quantitative source tracking
Author NameAffiliation
GUO Ping Agricultural Clean Watershed Research Group, Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture, Beijing 100081, China 
LI Hong-na Agricultural Clean Watershed Research Group, Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture, Beijing 100081, China 
LI Feng Agricultural Clean Watershed Research Group, Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture, Beijing 100081, China 
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Abstract:
      Microbial source tracking(MST) provides an accessible method for tracking the non-point contamination from biological sources, for it allows practitioners to discriminate among many possible sources of fecal contamination in the environmental waters by identifying the target biomarkers. In this paper, the origin, development process from qualitative to quantitative, characteristics and environmental applications of MST technology were briefly reviewed. The screening criteria of microbes as indicators were developed. Bacteroides spp. as one of the accepted indicators showed some advantages in quantitative MST because this microbe couldn't reproduce in vitro environment according to the criteria. The research on quantitative source tracking with Bacteroides spp. gene marker under different conditions has made a great progress. The research has been focused on the development of Bacteroides spp. gene-markers and their application to contamination source tracking at a quantitative level in water environment. The effects of environmental factors such as light, dark, temperature etc. on the decay of gene marks, and the correlation between gene-marker decay rate and different environmental factors were analyzed. The reported literatures showed that biological factors in the vitro environment greatly impact the MST technique. Improvements of accuracy and application scope of MST in the water environment were proposed.