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Changes of the Specific Infectivity of Tracer Phages during Transport in Porous Media
- Source :
- Environmental sciencetechnology. 52(6)
- Publication Year :
- 2018
-
Abstract
- Phages (i.e., viruses infecting bacteria) are considered to be good indicators and tracers for fecal pollution, hydraulic flow, or colloidal transport in the subsurface. They are typically quantified as total virus particles (VLP) or plaque forming units (PFU) of infectious phages. As transport may lead to phage deactivation, VLP quantification can overestimate the number of infectious phages. In contrast, PFU counts may underestimate the transport of total virus particles. Using PFU and tunable resistive pulse sensing-based counting for active and total phages, respectively, we quantified the effect of transport through laboratory percolation columns on the specific infectivity (SI). The SI is defined by the ratio of total VLP to PFU and is a measure for the minimum particle numbers needed to create a single infection. Transport of three marine tracer phages and the coli-phage (T4) was described by colloidal filtration theory. We found that apparent collision efficiencies of active and total phages differed. Depending on the phage properties (e.g., morphology or hydrophobicity), passage through a porous medium led to either an increasing or decreasing SI of effluent phages. Our data suggest that both phage mass recovery and the SI should be considered in quantitative phage tracer experiments.
- Subjects :
- 0301 basic medicine
viruses
010501 environmental sciences
complex mixtures
01 natural sciences
Virus
law.invention
03 medical and health sciences
Feces
law
TRACER
Environmental Chemistry
Bacteriophages
Filtration
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
Plaque-forming unit
Infectivity
biology
Chemistry
virus diseases
General Chemistry
biology.organism_classification
030104 developmental biology
Biophysics
Particle
Porous medium
Porosity
Bacteria
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 15205851
- Volume :
- 52
- Issue :
- 6
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Environmental sciencetechnology
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....fe944009077f7a3bed7aecebf8fc10ca