3rd International Aquatic Biotechnology Symposium, İstanbul, Türkiye, 25 - 27 Eylül 2024, ss.23
Taste and odour are among the most important aesthetic characteristics of water. They directly
affect the perception of water quality and influence the decision of water users to drink or not to
drink the water. However, tracing an unpleasant odour in water is a complex process. Geosmin
and MIB, which cause earthy and mouldy odour, are the most common taste and odour
compounds in water and mainly produced by cyano- and/or actinobacteria. Together with
analytical methods, molecular tools have been successfully used to the efficient detection of
geosmin and MIB in water. The presence of odour-producing bacteria can be detected by PCR
and the responsible organism could be identified by sequencing. Moreover, qPCR could be used
routinely in monitoring studies and as an early detection of problem. The main issue is to have
an universal primers to detect these genes in a wide array of cyanobacteria. Therefore, a new
primer sets were designed by the data mining of all available cyanobacteria genomes in
databases and used successfully in environmental samples. However, in aquatic ecosystems,
there are both abiotic and biotic factors that can affect odour production. Next-generation
sequencing method plays an important role in providing rapid and reliable results for the
identification of bacterial communities in an environmental sample. A monitoring study in
Sapanca Lake indicated that actinobacteria and cyanobacteria were responsible for the MIB and
Geosmin production and also degraders could be found simultaneously in the environment. As a
result, while analytical methods play an important role to measure the concentration of these
metabolites, molecular methods are vital in determining the source of the odour and to
understand the mechanism behind the production of these metabolites.