Publications by authors named "Fiona B Dunn"
Article Synopsis
- Wastewater surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 helps track COVID-19 trends but faces challenges in regions without centralized wastewater systems, particularly concerning the decay of viral RNA in the environment.
- A study tested the effects of sunlight on the decay of a specific gene target (N1) in SARS-CoV-2 and found minimal photolysis in controlled conditions, but significant decay in shallow wastewater.
- Factors like water depth, seasonal changes, and geographical location significantly influence the rate of decay, indicating that sunlight's impact on the N1 gene target is generally low, supporting the reliability of wastewater-based epidemiology.
Antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs; the genetic material in bacteria that encode for resistance to antibiotics) have been found in the aquatic environment, raising concerns of an environmental transmission route. In an effort to contribute to models predicting the fate of ARGs in the environment-to design control measures, predict health risks, inform ARG surveillance activities, and prioritize policy interventions-and given the importance of sunlight in damaging DNA, we evaluated the sunlight photolysis kinetics of antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB) and ARGs under laboratory conditions, focusing on SMS-3-5 and its ARGs and . Experiments were conducted in the absence of photosensitizers, and ARG decay rates were quantified by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) with short and long amplicon targets.
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