Detection of Clostridium perfringens in tsunami deposits after the Great East Japan Earthquake

Abstract

The Great East Japan Earthquake struck off the Tohoku and caused a tsunami in 2011. Most of the microbial characteristics of tsunami‐affected soil remain unknown and no published study has shown how a tsunami affects the risk of infection by Clostridium perfringens living in soil. In 2011 and 2015, C. perfringens was assessed in deposits in soil from tsunami‐damaged areas and undamaged areas of Miyagi. It was found that the number of C. perfringens was overwhelmingly greater in 2011 than in 2015 in the tsunami‐damaged areas. According to real‐time PCR, the prevalence C. perfringens organisms (%) was 103 fold greater in the damaged than in the undamaged areas.

Megatsunamis and microbial life on early Mars

“…Nevertheless, the impact of a tsunami is not limited to macroscopic marine life, and it also affects microorganisms. So far, few studies have been conducted on the impact of tsunami events on marine microbial ecology (Bhattacharyya et al, 2014;Somboonna et al, 2014;Makino et al, 2019). The results of these studies mainly indicate that tsunami-induced sediments have more microbial communities of prokaryotes (bacteria and archaea) than non-tsunami-affected sediments (Somboonna et al, 2014).…”