Cost-effective Method for Microbial Source Tracking Using Specific Human and Animal Viruses

Microbial contamination of the environment represents a significant health risk. Classical bacterial fecal indicators have shown to have significant limitations, viruses are more resistant to many inactivation processes and standard fecal indicators do not inform on the source of contamination. The development of cost-effective methods for the concentration of viruses from water and molecular assays facilitates the applicability of viruses as indicators of fecal contamination and as microbial source tracking (MST) tools. Adenoviruses and polyomaviruses are DNA viruses infecting specific vertebrate species including humans and are persistently excreted in feces and/or urine in all geographical areas studied. In previous studies, we suggested the quantification of human adenoviruses (HAdV) and JC polyomaviruses (JCPyV) by quantitative PCR (qPCR) as an index of human fecal contamination. Recently, we have developed qPCR assays for the specific quantification of porcine adenoviruses (PAdV) and bovine polyomaviruses (BPyV) as animal fecal markers of contamination with sensitivities of 1-10 genome copies per test tube. In this study, we present the procedure to be followed to identify the source of contamination in water samples using these tools. As example of representative results, analysis of viruses in ground water presenting high levels of nitrates is shown. Detection of viruses in low or moderately polluted waters requires the concentration of the viruses from at least several liters of water into a much smaller volume, a procedure that usually includes two concentration steps in series. This somewhat cumbersome procedure and the variability observed in viral recoveries significantly hamper the simultaneous processing of a large number of water samples. In order to eliminate the bottleneck caused by the two-step procedures we have applied a one-step protocol developed in previous studies and applicable to a diversity of water matrices. The procedure includes: acidification of ten-liter water samples, flocculation by skimmed milk, gravity sedimentation of the flocculated materials, collection of the precipitate and centrifugation, resuspension of the precipitate in 10 ml phosphate buffer. The viral concentrate is used for the extraction of viral nucleic acids and the specific adenoviruses and polyomaviruses of interest are quantified by qPCR. High number of samples may be simultaneously analyzed using this low-cost concentration method. The procedure has been applied to the analysis of bathing waters, seawater and river water and in this study, we present results analyzing groundwater samples. This high-throughput quantitative method is reliable, straightforward, and cost-effective.