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Disintegration of simulated drinking water biofilms with arrays of microchannel plasma jets.

ABSTRACT: Biofilms exist and thrive within drinking water distribution networks, and can present human health concerns. Exposure of simulated drinking water biofilms, grown from groundwater, to a 9?×?9 array of microchannel plasma jets has the effect of severely eroding the biofilm and deactivating the organisms they harbor. In-situ measurements of biofilm structure and thickness with an optical coherence tomography (OCT) system show the biofilm thickness to fall from 122?±?17?µm to 55?±?13?µm after 15?min. of exposure of the biofilm to the microplasma column array, when the plasmas are dissipating a power density of 58?W/cm2. All biofilms investigated vanish with 20?min. of exposure. Confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) demonstrates that the number of living cells in the biofilms declines by more than 93% with 15?min. of biofilm exposure to the plasma arrays. Concentrations of several oxygen-bearing species, generated by the plasma array, were found to be 0.4-21?nM/s for the hydroxyl radical (OH), 85-396?nM/s for the 1O2 excited molecule, 98-280?µM for H2O2, and 24-42?µM for O3 when the power density delivered to the array was varied between 3.6?W/cm2 and 79?W/cm2. The data presented here demonstrate the potential of microplasma arrays as a tool for controlling, through non-thermal disruption and removal, mixed-species biofilms prevalent in commercial and residential water systems.

SUBMITTER: Sun PP

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6194111 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Disintegration of simulated drinking water biofilms with arrays of microchannel plasma jets.

Sun Peter P PP Araud Elbashir M EM Huang Conghui C Shen Yun Y Monroy Guillermo L GL Zhong Shengyun S Tong Zikang Z Boppart Stephen A SA Eden J Gary JG Nguyen Thanh H TH

NPJ biofilms and microbiomes 20181018

Biofilms exist and thrive within drinking water distribution networks, and can present human health concerns. Exposure of simulated drinking water biofilms, grown from groundwater, to a 9 × 9 array of microchannel plasma jets has the effect of severely eroding the biofilm and deactivating the organisms they harbor. <i>In-situ</i> measurements of biofilm structure and thickness with an optical coherence tomography (OCT) system show the biofilm thickness to fall from 122 ± 17 µm to 55 ± 13 µm afte ...[more]

PMID: 30374407

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Project description:Although the route of transmission of Helicobacter pylori remains unknown, drinking water has been considered a possible transmission vector. It has been shown previously that, in water, biofilms are a protective niche for several pathogens, protecting them from stressful conditions, such as low carbon concentration, shear stress, and less-than-optimal temperatures. In this work, the influence of these three parameters on the persistence and cultivability of H. pylori in drinking-water biofilms was studied. Autochthonous biofilm consortia were formed in a two-stage chemostat system and then inoculated with the pathogen. Total numbers of H. pylori cells were determined by microscopy using a specific H. pylori 16S rRNA peptide nucleic acid probe, whereas cultivable cells were assessed by standard plating onto selective H. pylori medium. Cultivable H. pylori could not be detected at any time point, but the ability of H. pylori cells to incorporate, undergo morphological transformations, persist, and even agglomerate in biofilms for at least 31 days without a noticeable decrease in the total cell number (on average, the concentration was between 1.54 x 10(6) and 2.25 x 10(6) cells cm(-2)) or in the intracellular rRNA content may indicate that the loss of cultivability was due to entry into a viable but noncultivable state. Unlike previous results obtained for pure-culture H. pylori biofilms, shear stress did not negatively influence the numbers of H. pylori cells attached, suggesting that the autochthonous aquatic bacteria have an important role in retaining this pathogen in the sessile state, possibly by providing suitable microaerophilic environments or linking biomolecules to which the pathogen adheres. Therefore, biofilms appear to provide not only a safe haven for H. pylori but also a concentration mechanism so that subsequent sloughing releases a concentrated bolus of cells that might be infectious and that could escape routine grab sample microbiological analyses and be a cause of concern for public health.

Dataset Information

Disintegration of simulated drinking water biofilms with arrays of microchannel plasma jets.

Publications

Disintegration of simulated drinking water biofilms with arrays of microchannel plasma jets.

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