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An Improved Filter Elution and Cell Culture Assay Procedure for Evaluating Public Groundwater Systems for Culturable Enteroviruses
Author(s) -
Dahling Daniel R.
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
water environment research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.356
H-Index - 73
eISSN - 1554-7531
pISSN - 1061-4303
DOI - 10.2175/106143002x140378
Subject(s) - elution , chromatography , cartridge , chemistry , poliovirus , filter (signal processing) , groundwater , virus quantification , bottle , virus , biology , virology , materials science , geology , computer science , geotechnical engineering , metallurgy , composite material , computer vision
Large‐scale virus studies of groundwater systems require practical and sensitive procedures for both sample processing and viral assay. Filter adsorption–elution procedures have traditionally been used to process large‐volume water samples for viruses. In this study, five filter elution procedures using cartridge filters were evaluated for their effectiveness in processing samples. Of the five procedures tested, the third method, which incorporated two separate beef extract elutions (one being an overnight filter immersion in beef extract), recovered 95% of seeded poliovirus compared with recoveries of 36 to 70% for the other methods. For viral enumeration, an expanded roller bottle quantal assay was evaluated using seeded poliovirus. This cytopathic‐based method was considerably more sensitive than the standard plaque assay method. The roller bottle system was more economical than the plaque assay for the evaluation of comparable samples. Using roller bottles required less time and manipulation than the plaque procedure and greatly facilitated the examination of large numbers of samples. The combination of the improved filter elution procedure and the roller bottle assay for viral analysis makes large‐scale virus studies of groundwater systems practical. This procedure was subsequently eld tested during a groundwater study in which large‐volume samples (exceeding 800 L) were processed through the filters.