Abstract:
Contamination of surface water with enteric viruses is a major public health concern that warrants the need to develop reliable indicators for enteric viruses contamination. This work assesses the bio-diversity of coliphages to use as bio-indicators for viral water pollution. The study elucidates the occurrence of enteric viruses at various locations in Rosetta Branch of the Nile River in addition to five main drains located on its sides which selected for confirmation the eco-diversity of aquatic viral isolates. The evaluation was carried out using real time-quantitative reverse transcriptase - polymerase chain reaction (rt-qRT-PCR). Eight coliphage isolates were detected in both Rosetta Branch and drainage water samples. Transmission Electron microscopy revealed that, the isolated coliphages have an isometric head and long-contractile tail; some particles revealed a short tail with full heads, resembling those belong to the myoviridae and siphoviridae family. Restriction enzymes by EcoRI, HindIII and BamHI showed the presence of double stranded (ds) DNA as well as heterogeneity among these phages. The results showed that EcoRI produced 7, 6, 2, 9, 10, 8, 10, 7 unique fragments and HindIII produced 2, 3, 0, 1, 2, 5, 4, 3 unique fragments while BamHI produced only 4, 0, 1, 1, 0, 4, 2, 1 unique fragments, for the eight phage isolates, respectively. Out of fifteen tested sites, two only (El-Rahawy drain outlet and Sabal drain outlet) were found to be polluted with enteroviruses with rate of 3.6X104 and 3.4X104 gene copies per microliters (GC μl-1), respectively using rt-qRT-PCR.
