Hicks Ethan, Wiesner Mark R
Center for the Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology (CEINT) and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Duke University, Durham, N.C., USA.
Center for the Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology (CEINT) and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Duke University, Durham, N.C., USA.
Water Res. 2022 Jun 1;216:118303. doi: 10.1016/j.watres.2022.118303. Epub 2022 Mar 16.
The validity and usefulness of implementing bacteriophages into water treatment systems as agents of targeted bacterial inactivation is yet to be determined. While some concerns are still more purely biological in nature other concerns are still chiefly rooted in design feasibility. This work investigated bacteriophage heteroaggregation, a process whereby phages attach to non-host background particles, to explore different design options for water quality engineers, especially tuning mixing velocity. This was done by adapting batch/mixing assays, originally developed to study inert particle heteroaggregation, to characterize bacteriophage and kaolinite heteroaggregation using modified Smoluchowski parameters under different ionic strength conditions. This work found that regardless of the ionic strength or the tested phage to kaolinite ratios heteroaggregation occurred rapidly and was likely driven by extended DLVO forces. A model of bacteriophage-kaolinite heteroaggregation was generated and showed promising correspondence with observed laboratory data. This model, along with other findings, suggests that should bacteriophages be utilized as agents of host inactivation they ought to be used following particle separation processes to reduce the likelihood of phage scavenging through attachment to particulate matter rather than the targeted bacteria.
将噬菌体作为靶向细菌灭活剂应用于水处理系统的有效性和实用性尚未确定。虽然一些担忧本质上仍更纯粹是生物学方面的，但其他担忧主要源于设计可行性。这项工作研究了噬菌体异质聚集，即噬菌体附着在非宿主背景颗粒上的过程，以便为水质工程师探索不同的设计方案，特别是调节混合速度。这是通过改编最初用于研究惰性颗粒异质聚集的间歇/混合试验来完成的，以在不同离子强度条件下使用修正的斯莫卢霍夫斯基参数表征噬菌体和高岭土的异质聚集。这项工作发现，无论离子强度或测试的噬菌体与高岭土比例如何，异质聚集都迅速发生，并且可能是由扩展的DLVO力驱动的。生成了一个噬菌体 - 高岭土异质聚集模型，该模型与观察到的实验室数据显示出良好的对应关系。该模型以及其他研究结果表明，如果将噬菌体用作宿主灭活剂，它们应该在颗粒分离过程之后使用，以降低噬菌体通过附着在颗粒物而非靶向细菌上而被清除的可能性。
