Diversity ofBacteroides fragilisStrains in Their Capacity To Recover Phages from Human and Animal Wastes and from Fecally Polluted Wastewater

Abstract

Great differences in capability to detect bacteriophages from urban sewage of the area of Barcelona existed among 115 strains ofBacteroides fragilis. The capability of six of the strains to detect phages in a variety of feces and wastewater was studied. Strains HSP40 and RYC4023 detected similar numbers of phages in urban sewage and did not detect phages in animal feces. The other four strains detected phages in the feces of different animal species and in wastewater of both human and animal origin. Strain RYC2056 recovered consistently higher counts than the other strains and also detected counts ranging from 101 to approximately 103phages per ml in urban sewage from different geographical areas. This strain detected bacteriophages in animal feces even though their relative concentration with respect to the other fecal indicators was significantly lower in wastewater polluted with animal feces than in urban sewage.

Isolation of bacteriophage host strains of Bacteroides species suitable for tracking sources of animal faecal pollution in water

“…Bacteroides fragilis RYC2056 (ATCC700786) (Puig et al, 1999) and B. thetaiotaomicron GA17 (Payán et al, 2005) were used as host strains for phage detection in this study. Strain RYC2056 does not discriminate between faecal sources and was used as a control, while strain GA17 is specific for the detection of phages from human faecal sources.…”

“…Among these methods, bacteriophages that infect Bacteroides are potential tools for MST (Tartera et al, 1989;Grabow et al, 1995;Puig et al, 1999;Blanch et al, 2006). Bacteroides host strains vary in their capacity to discriminate between phages from different sources.…”

“…Bacteroides host strains vary in their capacity to discriminate between phages from different sources. Some strains do not discriminate between sources of pollution, such as Bacteroides fragilis strain RYC2056 (Puig et al, 1999), while others are very specific for human faecal pollution, such as Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron strain GA17 (Payán et al, 2005). A method has been described for the isolation of a suitable host with the capacity to detect bacteriophages from a given source (Payán et al, 2005).…”

Distribution of genotypes of F-specific RNA bacteriophages in human and non-human sources of faecal pollution in South Africa and Spain

“…Microbiological methods include: ratios of faecal coliforms to faecal streptococci (Geldreich and Kenner 1969); the presence of Rhodococcus coprophilus (Mara and Oragui 1981); the presence of some phenotypes of Bifidobacterium species (Mara and Oragui 1983); the presence of some phenotypes of Bacteroides species (Kreader 1995); ribotypes of Escherichia coli (Carson et al 2001;Parveen et al 1999); repetitive DNA sequences of E. coli (Dombek et al 2000); antibiotic resistance patterns (Wiggins 1996;Harwood et al 2000); serogrouping of F-specific RNA (F-RNA) bacteriophages (Furuse et al 1978); bacteriophages specific for various strains of Bacteroides fragilis (Tartera et al 1989;Puig et al 1999) and phage typing of Staphylococcus aureus (Zierdt et al 1980). The ideal would be to have a single test to determine the origin of faecal pollution.…”

Using indicators to assess microbial treatment and disinfection efficacy

“…Interestingly, in this instance the coliphage removals are more similar to human virus (adenovirus, rotavirus and enterovirus) removal than E. coli or bacterial pathogen removal for many treatments. Phage infecting Bacteroides rank third in abundance in raw wastewater after SC and F-RNA phage (Tartera and Jofre, 1987;Tartera et al, 1989;Lucena et al, 1994;Ebdon et al, 2007;Edbon et al,2012) and their ratio with respect to SC and F-RNA phages has been shown to be remarkably constant (Puig et al, 1999;Contreras-Coll et al, 2002;Lucena et al, 2003;Blanch et al, 2004;Jofre et al, 2007). Most Bacteroides phages have a very narrow host range (Lucena and Jofre, 2010).…”