Department of Environmental Health and Institute of Health and Environment, School of Public Health, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea.
Environ Sci Technol. 2010 May 1;44(9):3423-8. doi: 10.1021/es903282p.
Contamination from human and animal fecal waste is a primary cause of water pollution. Microbial source tracking (MST) may be a useful tool for high-quality environmental management and for assessing human health risks associated with water pollution. The goal of this study was to evaluate Enterococcus spp. as a target organism for MST. Thirty-four fecal samples were collected from five different sources (human, chicken, pig, cow, and goose) in South Korea. In total, 237 Enterococcus spp. were isolated from feces using membrane- Enterococcus indoxyl-beta-d-glucoside agar. The 16S rRNA gene and the whole genome were analyzed using nucleic acid sequencing and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), respectively. Both phylogenetic analysis and principal coordinate analysis using UniFrac were performed on the nucleic acid sequences of the 16S rRNA gene. According to P-tests from UniFrac, significant differences existed between Enterococcus spp. isolated from human feces and those from animal feces. In addition, we evaluated whether the esp gene of Enterococcus faecium could be a specific target for Enterococcus spp. isolated from human feces. Of 58 E. faecium isolates tested, only three were esp-positive. The specificity of the esp gene of E. faecium isolated from human feces was 100%, but the sensitivity was <10%. These results suggest that Enterococcus spp. have different molecular characteristics according to their fecal source and that these characteristics can be further identified by analyzing the esp gene and 16S rRNA sequences, whereas PFGE provides limited information on the fecal sources of Enterococcus spp.
人类和动物粪便中的污染是水污染的主要原因。微生物源追踪（MST）可能是高质量环境管理和评估与水污染相关的人类健康风险的有用工具。本研究的目的是评估粪肠球菌作为 MST 的目标生物。从韩国的五个不同来源（人、鸡、猪、牛和鹅）收集了 34 份粪便样本。共从粪便中分离出 237 株粪肠球菌，使用膜-肠球菌吲哚-β-d-葡萄糖苷琼脂。使用核酸测序和脉冲场凝胶电泳（PFGE）分别分析 16S rRNA 基因和全基因组。对 16S rRNA 基因的核酸序列进行了基于系统发育分析和主坐标分析的 UniFrac。根据 UniFrac 的 P-检验，从人粪便中分离出的粪肠球菌与从动物粪便中分离出的粪肠球菌存在显著差异。此外，我们评估了肠球菌 faecium 的 esp 基因是否可以作为人源粪肠球菌的特异性靶标。在测试的 58 株粪肠球菌中，只有 3 株为 esp 阳性。人源粪肠球菌 esp 基因的特异性为 100%，但敏感性<10%。这些结果表明，粪肠球菌根据其粪便来源具有不同的分子特征，通过分析 esp 基因和 16S rRNA 序列可以进一步鉴定这些特征，而 PFGE 提供的关于粪肠球菌粪便来源的信息有限。
