著者

Yifan Zhu Wakana Oishi Mayuko Saito Masaaki Kitajima Daisuke Sano

出版者

Japan Society on Water Environment

雑誌

Journal of Water and Environment Technology (ISSN:13482165)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.19, no.3, pp.170-183, 2021 (Released:2021-06-10)

参考文献数

60

被引用文献数

10

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Amid the ongoing battle against COVID-19, the scientific community has high hope in wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE). It was not only proposed as a complement to capacity-plagued clinical testing, but also an early warning tool that may enable timely intervention measures. In this study, we developed a wastewater SARS-CoV-2 RNA load model based on the fecal shedding profile of infected individuals. The epidemic data of COVID-19 in the Tokyo metropolitan area were used to perform a simulation to analyze the capability of WBE in providing early warning. The simulation result suggests that under the current settings, WBE is not a feasible approach as the detection limit is too high to provide a warning signal in the early stage of the epidemic. However, it also indicates that if the methodology can be reasonably improved by new experimental practices, optimized sampling strategy, and refined model, the concentration of viral RNA in Tokyo wastewater would exceed the detection limit as early as in April 2020, when Tokyo was being hit by the first wave of COVID-19 outbreak. This early detection may have great social benefit if the detection can be used to facilitate the decision-making process and form epidemic emergency response.

著者

Satoru Suzuki Daisuke Sano

出版者

Japan Society on Water Environment

雑誌

Journal of Water and Environment Technology (ISSN:13482165)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.21, no.2, pp.97-107, 2023 (Released:2023-04-10)

参考文献数

79

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There is much evidence that the environment is a reservoir of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). For ARG latency and stability, environmental factors should play a role since ARGs are transferred among bacterial species, which results in their evolution and dissemination. Recent findings have expanded the novel mechanisms of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) beyond classically accepted HGT mechanisms such as conjugation, transformation, and transduction. In these HGT processes, environmental factors directly or indirectly affect the transfer rate and mechanism. Here, we focus on the effect of protists that affect HGT, because HGT is regulated among the microbial community, in which protist grazing is one factor that enhances HGT. Protist grazing eliminates planktonic bacteria. However, it is reported that environmental DNA release and HGT in protist vacuoles are increased by the grazing, although the effect is not uniform and depends on the environmental conditions. Biofilms protect bacteria and accelerate HGT. In these processes, quorum sensing and organic matter contribute to HGT. Although HGT occurs between bacterial cells, other microorganisms such as protists should be recognized as factors relating to HGT. We should pay attention to microbial ecosystem when consider ARG risk from water environment in terms of “one health” aspect.