Use of bacteriophage to inactivate pathogenic bacteria from wastewater

Abstract

The aim of this study was to enhance the rhizobacterium potential in horizontal subsurface flow constructed wetland (CW) system planted by Phragmites australis using specific and lytic phages. The bioinoculation of specific bacteriophage for target bacteria; Salmonella typhi, and the monitoring of bacterial inactivation under different conditions showed the effectiveness of this methodology to enhance bacteria reduction and consequentially ameliorate purification performance of this studied biological treatment system. The injection of the phage at a concentration equal to 10³ UFP/mL within the rhizosphere of the inoculated filter (F) was allowed 1 U-Log₁₀ of improvement of bacterial inactivation compared to the control filter (T) nearly 1 logarithmic unit thus, a 90% improvement of bacteria reduction. When we increased the phage titer (10⁵ UFP/mL), the bacterial reduction equal to 2.75 U-Log₁₀ (N/N₀) was registered that corresponds to a decrease of nearly 99.9%. According to the first-order model, the inactivation coefficient is equal to 2.29 min⁻¹ (0.88 min⁻¹ for the first experiment) and the bacterial reduction rate is 5 times higher than that determined for the control filter. This results show the positive impact of the phage in the bacterial inactivation and the improvement of water treatment of the biofilter C.

Keywords:

• Bioinoculation
• phage
• constructed wetland
• rhizobacterium

Acknowledgment

This work is supported by CERTE contract programs funded by the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research of Tunisia.

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Data availability statement

The data used to support this study are included within the article.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.