Pathogenic microbes in wastewater: Identification and characterization

The rapid global industrialization and rising word human populations produced every year billions tons of wastewater and it has been estimated that more than 75% of these wastewater discharged into the open land without any treatment. However, these waste water contains huge amount of chemicals, pathogenic microorganism, heavy metals and toxic substances etc. The pathogenic wastewater microbe's identification and characterization has become one of the most challenging aspects, Molecular approaches have provided the means to examine and classify harmful microbial diversity and characterize specific organisms without the necessity for cultivation throughout the previous decade. Despite the need for quick molecular results, conventional wastewater microbial detection assays can take several days to produce a result. This timeframe is no longer acceptable, given the emergence of new molecular-based technologies. This chapter discusses current latest techniques which are used to characterize and identify the pathogenic microbes in the waste water.