Performance, Design, and Analysis in Microbial Source Tracking Studies.

The article focuses on the development and validation of microbial source tracking (MST) methods for identifying and quantifying the dominant source of fecal contamination in resource waters such as drinking, ground, recreational, and wildlife habitat waters. The MST was discovered in early 1980s due to the studies of Escherichia coli (E. coli), population biology and antimicrobial resistance studies. The methods in MST was termed as library dependent because its studies were based on construction of an isolate library or host origin database, of indicator bacteria from known-source fecal material. Many scientists and water resource managers believe that the methods for tracking fecal contamination to its source are accurate and reliable for field investigations.