Role of Oxygen Tension on the Transport and Retention of Two Pathogenic Bacteria in Saturated Porous Media

To examine the influence of variations in the dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration on pathogen mobility, laboratory-scale filtration experiments were performed using the enterohemorrhagic strain Escherichia coli O157:H7 and the enteroinvasive organism Yersinia enterocolitica. Cells were incubated either in the absence (anaerobic) or in the presence (aerobic) of oxygen to understand how these two growth conditions may affect bacterial transport and retention in water-saturated granular porous media. The influence of DO during growth is found to be organism dependent, whereby E coli O157: H7 exhibits decreased transport potential when grown in the presence of O-2 and Y. enterocolitica exhibits greater transport when grown aerobically. To understand the influence of DO changes during cell acclimation and transport, bacteria were resuspended and acclimated in either oxygen-depleted (low DO) or oxygen-rich (saturated DO) electrolytes prior to conduction of filtration experiments. The effect of DO on bacterial transport and retention is shown to be dependent on the antecedent growth conditions and on the organism studied. Measurements of the cell surface charge, shape, and size reveal some variability when the oxygen tension is changed during bacterial growth or acclimation and are linked to the observed bacterial transport behavior.