SRA

Reclaimed water use is an important component of sustainable water resource management. This study characterized the viral community found in reclaimed water and compared it to viruses in potable water. Reclaimed water contained 1000-fold more virus-like particles (VLPs) than potable water, having approximately 108 VLPs per milliliter. Metagenomic analyses revealed that most of the viruses in both reclaimed and potable water were novel. Bacteriophages dominated the DNA viral community in both reclaimed and potable water, but reclaimed water had a distinct phage community based on phage family distributions and host representation within each family. Eukaryotic viruses similar to plant pathogens and invertebrate picornaviruses dominated RNA metagenomic libraries. Established human pathogens were not detected in reclaimed water viral metagenomes, which contained a wealth of novel single-stranded DNA and RNA viruses related to plant, animal, and insect viruses. Therefore reclaimed water may play a role in the dissemination of highly stable viruses. Information regarding viruses present in reclaimed water but not in potable water can be used to identify new bioindicators of water quality. Future studies will need to investigate the infectivity and host range of these viruses to evaluate the impacts of reclaimed water use on human and ecosystem health. This study aimed to identify dominant viral types in reclaimed water and compare it to viral types in potable water. For this purpose, six metagenomic libraries were constructed from reclaimed water samples (n = 3) and potable water (n = 1). The DNA viral community was examined in reclaimed and potable water (n = 4 for DNA libraries), while RNA viruses were only studied in reclaimed water samples (n = 2 for cDNA libraries). 454 viral metagenomic sequences submitted to the Short Read Archive are available in the Project data link.