Publication

Abstract : More than 200 million tons of sewage goes untreated and 90 percent of sewage is discharged directly into the water bodies contaminating it with dreadful human pathogens. The intractability of the problem becomes more critical because of the emergence of antibiotic resistance organisms. Here we propose an environmental friendly lytic approach of using bacteriophages from sewage to target bacterial populations where by treating the wastewater. We developed a bacteriophage stock library against sewage pathogens from domestic wastewater and developed a method to treat the wastewater with a cocktail of bacteriophages that reduced the sewage flora several times. The phages were characterized by phage titre and burst size. We isolated phage DNA and its size was determined to be more than 10 kb. Host range is an important characteristic factor, which makes the bacteriophage a potential therapeutic agent against bacterial infections. All the phages we isolated showed a very narrow host range. The stability and storage of the phages at room temperature and on exposure to light were tested. Some of the cost effective production and broadcasting of bacteriophages into wastewater has been tested. The phages against sulfur reducing bacteria like Salmonella sp. and Proteus sp. proved successful to reduce hydrogen sulfide responsible for malodour in wastewater