Exploring the Potential of Nanotrap® Microbiome Particles and digital PCR for High-Throughput Microbial Source Tracking in Surface Waters
Poster: In coastal Louisiana, high water tables and poor soil conditions often require the use of aerobic treatment units (ATUs) for onsite sewage treatment. Owing to ATU treatment failures, coastal surface waters are subject to increased fecal contamination via domestic wastewater discharge. While useful to measure fecal contamination, traditional culture-based bacteriological testing cannot indicate specific sources of contamination for remediation. Microbial source tracking assays, on the other hand, are source-specific molecular tests that can be used to more precisely determine the source of fecal contamination for the targeted response. Standard methods for MST require the use of membrane filtration to concentrate samples for testing, which greatly limits throughput. Nanotrap Microbiome Particles (NMPs) utilize the Microbiome A&B particles’ high affinity for bacteria to attract, capture and enrich low-abundance bacteria in the solution (Ahmed et al., 2023). NMPs can be used in conjunction with liquid handling platforms, such as the KingFisher Apex to greatly increase sample throughput and decrease time to results. But the performance of NMPs for Microbial Source Tracking (MST) in comparison with other concentration workflows has not been evaluated.
