Isolation and characterization of bacteriophages infecting nocardioforms in wastewater treatment plant.

Krishna Khairnar,Rajshree H Chandekar,Waman N Paunikar,Preeti Pal

doi:10.1155/2014/151952

Abstract

Activated sludge plants (ASP) are associated with the stable foaming problem worldwide. Apart from the physical and chemical treatment methods, biological treatment method has been least explored and may prove to be a novel and ecofriendly approach to tackle the problem of stable foam formation. In ASP Nocardia species are commonly found and are one of the major causes for forming sticky and stable foam. This study describes the isolation and characterization of three Nocardia bacteriophages NOC1, NOC2, and NOC3 for the control of Nocardia species. The bacteriophages isolated in this study have shown promising results in controlling foam producing bacterial growth under laboratory conditions, suggesting that it may prove useful in the field as an alternative biocontrol agent to reduce the foaming problem. To the best of our knowledge to date no work has been published from India related to biological approach for the control of foaming.

Highlights

Activated sludge process (ASP) is the most commonly used process to reduce the toxicity of waste water by processing it microbiologically
We report the characterization of three Nocardia phages NOC1, NOC2, and NOC3 isolated from effluent treatment plant (ETP) and dairy ETP Nagpur, India
On the basis of growth of bacteriophages on N. rhodochrous, N. amarae, and N. pinensis phages were named as NOC1, NOC2, and NOC3, respectively

Summary

Introduction

Activated sludge process (ASP) is the most commonly used process to reduce the toxicity of waste water by processing it microbiologically. Treatment is given to every type of wastewater using microbial communities for the degradation of organic matter present in water [1]. Microbes use the organic matters as their energy source and degrade them into a less toxic form, but most of the system suffers from the excessive growth of unwanted mycolic acid containing filamentous bacteria or mycolata [2], which lead to the formation of brown and sticky foam [3]. The wastewater containing slowly degradable organic material like lipids, proteins, and fats may favor the growth of filamentous microorganisms like M. parvicella and G. amarae thereby leading to increased foaming [3, 6, 10]. It has been reported that the formation of scum and stable foam in aeration tank (AT), secondary clarifier (SC), and activated sludge (AS) is a global problem [9, 11, 12]

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