The Department of Soil, Water, and Climate
Room 439 Borlaug Hall
1991 Upper Buford Circle
St Paul, MN 55108
Elevated fecal coliform levels are found in many watersheds due
to sources that include inadequate septic systems, run-off from
pastures and manure treated agricultural land, and wildlife.
This Web site describes a method to identify source(s) of fecal contamination
by DNA fingerprints generated using the polymerase chain reaction
(PCR) and whole E. coli cells.
Fingerprints from E. coli strains
isolated from local streams or lakes may be identified by comparison
to our fingerprint database of E. coli strains
isolated from known human and animal sources. A quick overview
of the procedure (see background)
and detailed protocols (see methods)
are also available.
This work was partially supported by funding from:
A paper using this method has been published: Dombek,
P.E., L.K. Johnson, S.T. Zimmerley, and M.J. Sadowsky.
2000. Use of repetitive DNA sequences and the PCR to differentiate
Escherichia coli isolates from human and animal sources.
Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 66:2572-2577.
Note: The current protocol has been changed since our
publication. We now use whole cells from single colonies grown
on agar plates (see methods)
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A paper using this method has been published: 