Estimating rates of change to interpret quantitative wastewater surveillance of disease trends.

Background: Wastewater monitoring data can be used to estimate disease trends to inform public health responses. One commonly estimated metric is the rate of change in pathogen quantity, which typically correlates with clinical surveillance in retrospective analyses. However, the accuracy of rate of change estimation approaches has not previously been evaluated.

Persistence of sewage-associated genetic markers in advanced and conventional treated recycled water: implications for microbial source tracking in surface waters.

Unlabelled: Sewage contamination of environmental waters is increasingly assessed by measuring DNA from sewage-associated microorganisms in microbial source tracking (MST) approaches. However, DNA can persist through wastewater treatment and reach surface waters when treated sewage/recycled water is discharged, which may falsely indicate pollution from untreated sewage. Recycled water discharged from an advanced wastewater treatment (AWT) facility into a Florida stream elevated the sewage-associated HF183 marker 1,000-fold, with a minimal increase in cultured .

Using a combination of quantitative culture, molecular, and infrastructure data to rank potential sources of fecal contamination in Town Creek Estuary, North Carolina.

Estuarine water quality is declining worldwide due to increased tourism, coastal development, and a changing climate. Although well-established methods are in place to monitor water quality, municipalities struggle to use the data to prioritize infrastructure for monitoring and repair and to determine sources of contamination when they occur. The objective of this study was to assess water quality and prioritize sources of contamination within Town Creek Estuary (TCE), Beaufort, North Carolina, by combining culture, molecular, and geographic information systems (GIS) data into a novel contamination source ranking system.

Risk of Gastroenteritis from Swimming at a Wastewater-Impacted Tropical Beach Varies across Localized Scales.

Population growth and changing climate are expected to increase human exposure to pathogens in tropical coastal waters. We examined microbiological water quality in three rivers within 2.3 km of each other that impact a Costa Rican beach and in the ocean outside their plumes during the rainy and dry seasons.

An assessment of three methods for extracting bacterial DNA from beach sand.

Aims: Beach water quality is regulated by faecal indicator bacteria levels, sand is not, despite known human health risk from exposure to beach sand. We compared the performance of three methods to extract bacterial DNA from beach sand as a step toward a standard method.

Methods And Results: The analytical sensitivity of quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) for Enterococcus was compared for the slurry (suspension, agitation, membrane filtration of supernatant), versus direct extraction using PowerSoil™ or PowerMax Soil™ kits.

Relationships among microbial indicators of fecal pollution, microbial source tracking markers, and pathogens in Costa Rican coastal waters.

Tropical coastal waters are understudied, despite their ecological and economic importance. They also reflect projected climate change scenarios for other climate zones, e.g.

Ubiquity and functional uniformity in CO2 concentrating mechanisms in multiple phyla of Bacteria is suggested by a diversity and prevalence of genes encoding candidate dissolved inorganic carbon transporters.

Autotrophic microorganisms catalyze the entry of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC; = CO2 + HCO3- + CO32-) into the biological component of the global carbon cycle, despite dramatic differences in DIC abundance and composition in their sometimes extreme environments. "Cyanobacteria" are known to have CO2 concentrating mechanisms (CCMs) to facilitate growth under low CO2 conditions. These CCMs consist of carboxysomes, containing enzymes ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate oxygenase and carbonic anhydrase, partnered to DIC transporters.