Interaction of Human Enteric Viruses with Microbial Compounds: Implication for Virus Persistence and Disinfection Treatments

Abstract

Although the interaction between phages and bacteria has already been well described, it only recently emerged that human viruses also interact with bacteria in the mammalian gut. We studied whether this interaction could occur in tap water and thus confer enteric viruses protection against temperature and the classical disinfection treatments used in drinking water production. We demonstrated that the addition of lipopolysaccharide or peptidoglycan of bacterial origin to enterovirus provides thermal protection through stabilization of the viral capsid. This interaction plays a role when viruses are exposed to disinfection that targets the capsid, but less so when the virus genome is directly targeted. The interaction seems to be serotype-specific, suggesting that the capsid protein sequence could be important. The protection is linked to a direct association between viral particles and bacterial compounds as observed by microscopy. These results show that bacterial compounds present in the environment can affect virus inactivation.

Fecal Components Modulate Human Astrovirus Infectivity in Cells and Reconstituted Intestinal Tissues

“…Bacterial surface glycans can also benefit viruses through other direct interactions. These molecules can stabilize viral particles but also enhance binding to viral receptors (12–14, 16). Our binding assays suggested that HAstV attachment to host cells is not altered by incubation at 37°C.…”

Several forms of SARS-CoV-2 RNA can be detected in wastewaters : implication for wastewater-based epidemiology and risk assessment

“…Heat inactivation is commonly used for studying virus survival in water. In low temperature range (<50°C), the inactivation of naked viruses mainly comes from the denaturation of capsids (Waldman et al, 2020(Waldman et al, , 2017. However little is known concerning enveloped viruses.…”

Specific Interactions between Human Norovirus and Environmental Matrices: Effects on the Virus Ecology

“…Many studies have shown that the virus–solid particle interactions can interrupt the disinfection processes [109,110]. Free and particle-associated noroviruses have provided different results in disinfection studies [111,112].…”