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Occurrence of F-Specific Bacteriophages in Untreated and Treated Wastewaters in Mumbai

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Abstract

F + coliphages are considered as potential enteric viral indicators in water systems as a tool for on-site validation of wastewater treatment processes. The present study evaluated the occurrence of F + coliphages in wastewaters collected from three wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in Mumbai city, to assess this potential. The detection and enumeration of F + coliphages was carried out from WWTPs Z1, Z3 and Z5 using the ISO 10705–1 and U.S EPA 1601 methods. F + coliphages were majorly detected in untreated wastewater samples followed by a few secondary treated samples in WWTP-Z1 and Z3 and one tertiary treated sample from Z1, these differences were found to be statistically significant. The difference in F + coliphage levels between the treatment stages highlight their potential as indicators for monitoring the efficiency of wastewater treatment. The overall positivity of F + coliphage was 35.09% for Salmonella. typhimurium WG49 host (as per ISO 10705–1), was higher by 10.52% for Escherichia coli Famp HS host (as per U.S EPA 1601) (45.61%), highlighting the efficiency of the latter host over the former in F + coliphage detection. Significant difference in F + coliphage counts using the two bacterial hosts were observed in WWTP-Z3 (p = 0.001) and WWTP-Z1 (p = 0.047) but not in WWTP-Z5 (p = 0.332).

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Acknowledgements

This work is partly funded by the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF) [Ref No: IUSSTF/VN-COVID/081/2020]. We sincerely thank the authorities of Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) for their kind approvals for sample collection. We thank Mr. Mayur Shelar and Mr. Shivam Nikam for helping with sample collection and transportation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Microbiology, Bhavan’s College, Andheri West, Mumbai, 400058, Maharashtra, India

    Smita Menon & Zarine Bhathena

  2. Bhavan’s Research Center, Bhavan’s College Campus, Andheri West, Mumbai, 400058, Maharashtra, India

    Hima Wani, Dipen Desai, Nishith Desai & Sandhya Shrivastava

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  1. Smita Menon
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  2. Hima Wani
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  3. Dipen Desai
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  4. Zarine Bhathena
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  5. Nishith Desai
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  6. Sandhya Shrivastava
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Contributions

ND, ZB and SS conceptualized the study, SM, DD and HW coordinated sample collection, SM and HW carried out sample processing, SM, DD and SS analysed the data, SM wrote the draft manuscript and DD and SS edited the draft manuscript, all authors have read and approved the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Sandhya Shrivastava.

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Menon, S., Wani, H., Desai, D. et al. Occurrence of F-Specific Bacteriophages in Untreated and Treated Wastewaters in Mumbai. Indian J Microbiol 64, 254–259 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12088-023-01181-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12088-023-01181-7

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