Bacteriophage Based Monitoring and Engineering Novel Approaches to Domestic Wastewater Treatment

Abstract

Nutrient removal and subsequent control of pathogens in wastewater is key to its potential treatment and safe reuse of wastewater. Traditional methods based on activated sludge and aerobic digestion require additional physical or chemical processes (chlorine/ UV/ozone) for pathogen inactivation. These methods add to economic cost and potential ecological hazards from disinfection by-products formed in the wastewater (Kesari et al., 2021). Specific reduction of pathogens potentially can promote other non-target competing bacteria to grow on dead bacterial lysate and reduce the nutrient load in wastewater. In this regard the safety and specificity of bacteriophages (phages) to infect the specific bacterial host make it a unique tool for controlling and monitoring the pathogenic bacteria in different environmental systems (Stone et al., 2019). Bacteriophage-based typing of bacterial strains is also a classical method of identifying bacterial strains, even though its usage has been limited because of their high diversity and labor-intensive nature. Hence, we have been working on exploration of bacteriophages for detection of specific pathogens (especially antimicrobial resistant bacteria) and their reduction in sewage treatment set up and came up with the following aim and objectives of the present PhD thesis. newlineAim newlineThe key hypothesis in the present study is if phages are specific to specific bacterial hosts, they can be potentially used as diagnostic in complex microbiome of sewage as well as clinical samples. newlineThe same can also be used for reducing the load of target pathogens and subsequently monitored by metagenomic sequencing and analysis. newlineObjectives 1. Monitoring of sewage microbial load 2. Develop bacteriophage-based detection of antimicrobial-resistant strains newline3. Monitoring and engineering microbiome dynamics by phages: culture-dependent and independent (metagenomics) newlineReview of Literature newline Wastewater is quotUsed water from any combination of domestic, industrial, commercial or agricultural activities, surface runoff/st