Detection of adenovirus in the waters of the Seine River estuary by nested-PCR.

Several systems for isolating viruses from environmental samples have been tested. The most promising method is based on genomic amplification. The authors attempted to detect adenovirus in nucleic-acid extracts from the Seine River estuary by a two-step amplification of a 220-bp segment of the conserved coding region of type 2 adenovirus hexon protein L3. The primers used in this study detected the most prevalent adenovirus serotypes in human disease in France, but not other virus strains or bacteria. The sensitivity of the nested polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification was estimated to be 10(2) copies of the adenovirus target sequence per ml of Seine River water. Nucleic-acid extracts from Seine River estuary waters were analysed and some tested positive for the presence of adenoviruses.