Drinking water biofiltration processes have evolved over time, moving from unintentional to deliberate, with careful filter media selection, nutrient and trace metal supplementation, oxidant amendment, and bioaugmentation of key microorganisms, to achieve improvements in water quality. Biofiltration is on the precipice of a revolution that aims to customize the microbial community for targeted functional outcomes. These outcomes might be to enhance or introduce target functional activity for contaminant removal, to avoid hydraulic challenges, or to shape beneficially the downstream microbial community. Moving from the foundational molecular techniques that are commonly applied to biofiltration processes, such as amplicon sequencing and quantitative, real-time polymerase chain reaction, the biofiltration revolution will be facilitated by modern biotechnological tools, including metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, and metaproteomics. The application of such tools will provide a rich knowledge base of microbial community structure/function data under various water quality and operational conditions, where this information will be utilized to select biofilter conditions that promote the enrichment and maintenance of microorganisms with the desired functions.

中文翻译：

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将生物技术应用于饮用水的生物过滤：推进科学和实践。

饮用水的生物过滤过程已经随着时间的推移而发展，从无意的转变为有意的，通过精心选择过滤介质，营养和微量金属的补充，氧化剂的改良以及关键微生物的生物强化来实现水质的改善。生物过滤技术正处于一场革命的边缘，这场革命旨在为目标功能成果定制微生物群落。这些结果可能是为了增强或引入目标功能活性以去除污染物，避免水力挑战或有利地塑造下游微生物群落。从通常应用于生物过滤过程的基础分子技术，例如扩增子测序和定量实时聚合酶链反应，包括宏基因组学，元转录组学和元蛋白质组学在内的现代生物技术工具将推动生物过滤革命。此类工具的应用将为各种水质和运行条件下的微生物群落结构/功能数据提供丰富的知识库，其中该信息将用于选择生物滤池条件，以促进具有所需功能的微生物的富集和维持。