Drinking Water Microbiome Project: Is it Time?

Now is an opportune time to foster collaborations across sectors and geographical boundaries to enable development of best practices for drinking water (DW) microbiome research, focusing on accuracy and reproducibility of meta-omic techniques (while learning from past microbiome projects). A large-scale coordinated effort that builds on this foundation will enable the urgently needed comprehensive spatiotemporal understanding and control of DW microbiomes by engineering interventions to protect public health. This opinion paper highlights the need to initiate and conduct a large-scale coordinated DW microbiome project by addressing key knowledge gaps and recommends a roadmap for this effort.