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Survival of host-associated bacteroidales cells and their relationship with Enterococcus spp., Campylobacter jejuni, Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium, and adenovirus in freshwater microcosms as measured by propidium monoazide-quantitative PCR.

ABSTRACT: The ideal host-associated genetic fecal marker would be capable of predicting the presence of specific pathogens of concern. Flowthrough freshwater microcosms containing mixed feces and inocula of the pathogens Campylobacter jejuni, Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium, and adenovirus were placed at ambient temperature in the presence and absence of diurnal sunlight. The total Enterococcus DNA increased during the early periods (23 h) under sunlight exposure, even though cultivable Enterococcus and DNA in intact cells, as measured by propidium monoazide (PMA), decreased with first-order kinetics during the entire period. We found a significant difference in the decay of host-associated Bacteroidales cells between sunlight exposure and dark conditions (P value < 0.05), whereas the persistence of host-associated Bacteroidales DNA was comparable. The 2-log reduction times of adenovirus were 72 h for sunlight exposure and 99 h for dark conditions with similar decay rate constants (P value = 0.13). The persistences of fecal Bacteroidales cells and Campylobacter cells exposed to sunlight were similar, and host-associated Bacteroidales DNA and waterborne pathogen DNA were degraded at comparable rates (P values > 0.05). Overall, the ratio of quantitative PCR (qPCR) cycle threshold (C(T)) values with and without PMA treatment was indicative of the time elapsed since inoculation of the microcosm with (i) fecal material from different animal sources based on host-associated Bacteroidales and (ii) pure cultures of bacterial pathogens. The use of both PMA-qPCR and qPCR may yield more realistic information about recent sources of fecal contamination and result in improved prediction of waterborne pathogens and assessment of health risk.

SUBMITTER: Bae S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3272992 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:BackgroundHigh-throughput sequencing provides a powerful window into the structural and functional profiling of microbial communities, but it is unable to characterize only the viable portion of microbial communities at scale. There is as yet not one best solution to this problem. Previous studies have established viability assessments using propidium monoazide (PMA) treatment coupled with downstream molecular profiling (e.g., qPCR or sequencing). While these studies have met with moderate success, most of them focused on the resulting "viable" communities without systematic evaluations of the technique. Here, we present our work to rigorously benchmark "PMA-seq" (PMA treatment followed by 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing) for viability assessment in synthetic and realistic microbial communities.ResultsPMA-seq was able to successfully reconstruct simple synthetic communities comprising viable/heat-killed Escherichia coli and Streptococcus sanguinis. However, in realistically complex communities (computer screens, computer mice, soil, and human saliva) with E. coli spike-in controls, PMA-seq did not accurately quantify viability (even relative to variability in amplicon sequencing), with its performance largely affected by community properties such as initial biomass, sample types, and compositional diversity. We then applied this technique to environmental swabs from the Boston subway system. Several taxa differed significantly after PMA treatment, while not all microorganisms responded consistently. To elucidate the "PMA-responsive" microbes, we compared our results with previous PMA-based studies and found that PMA responsiveness varied widely when microbes were sourced from different ecosystems but were reproducible within similar environments across studies.ConclusionsThis study provides a comprehensive evaluation of PMA-seq exploring its quantitative potential in synthetic and complex microbial communities, where the technique was effective for semi-quantitative purposes in simple synthetic communities but provided only qualitative assessments in realistically complex community samples. Video abstract.

Dataset Information

Survival of host-associated bacteroidales cells and their relationship with Enterococcus spp., Campylobacter jejuni, Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium, and adenovirus in freshwater microcosms as measured by propidium monoazide-quantitative PCR.

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