Concentration of Cryptosporidium oocysts from river water by coagulation and foam separation combined with acid dissolution of ferric flocs

Fast, sensitive, and reliable detection of waterborne pathogens by digital PCR after coagulation and foam concentration

The quantification of pathogens is important for assessing water safety and preventing disease outbreaks. Culture-independent approaches, such as quantitative PCR (qPCR) and digital PCR (dPCR), are useful techniques for quantifying pathogens in water samples. However, since pathogens are usually present at low concentrations in water, it is necessary to concentrate microbial cells before extracting their DNA. Many existing microbial concentration methods are inefficient or take a long time to perform. In this study, we applied a coagulation and foam separation method to concentrate environmental water samples of between 1000 and 5000 mL to 100 μL of DNA (i.e., a 1-5 × 10⁴-fold concentration). The concentration process took <1 h. The DNA samples were then used to quantify various target pathogens using dPCR. One gene, the Shiga toxin gene (stx₂) of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli, was detected at 32 copies/100 mL in a river water sample. The coagulation and foam concentration method followed by dPCR reported herein is a fast, sensitive, and reliable method to quantify pathogen genes in environmental water samples.

Concentration of MS2 phage in river water by a combined ferric colloid adsorption and foam separation-based method, with MS2 phage leaching from ferric colloid

The concentration of MS2 phage as a model RNA virus in river water using a combined ferric colloid adsorption and foam separation-based method was examined. The MS2 phage concentrations were determined by the plaque-forming unit (PFU) method and reverse transcription quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) analysis. When ferric colloid adsorption was performed prior to foam separation, MS2 phage was effectively removed from river water and concentrated in the generated foam within 7 min. The removal efficiency was >99% at the optimum iron and casein concentrations of 5 mg-Fe/L and 10 mg/L, respectively. Furthermore, based on the analysis of the collected ferric colloid dissolved using deferoxamine, the MS2 concentration in the colloid-dissolved solution was 190-fold higher than that found in raw water according to RT-qPCR analysis. This is a novel method for concentrating RNA viruses to facilitate their detection in river water using coagulation and foam separation combined with chelate dissolution of ferric flocs.