During the COVID-19 pandemic, wastewater surveillance was widely used to monitor temporal and geo... more During the COVID-19 pandemic, wastewater surveillance was widely used to monitor temporal and geographical infection trends. Using this as a foundation, a statewide program for routine wastewater monitoring of gastrointestinal pathogens was established in Oklahoma. The results from 18 months of surveillance showed that wastewater concentrations of Salmonella, Campylobacter, and norovirus exhibit similar seasonal patterns to those observed in reported human cases (F = 4–29, p < 0.05) and that wastewater can serve as an early warning tool for increases in cases, offering between one- and two-weeks lead time. Approximately one third of outbreak alerts in wastewater correlated in time with confirmed outbreaks of Salmonella or Campylobacter and our results further indicated that several outbreaks are likely to go undetected through the traditional surveillance approach currently in place. Better understanding of the true distribution and burden of gastrointestinal infections ultimatel...
A group from the Microbial Diversity course in 1997 isolated an Anabaena sp. from School Street M... more A group from the Microbial Diversity course in 1997 isolated an Anabaena sp. from School Street Marsh in Woods Hole, MA that was seen to have bacterial epibionts strictly associated with only the cell wall of the Anabaena heterocysts. John Waterbury and Elinor Ament were able to isolate the Anabaena sp. free of its epibionts and found that the epibiont was unsuccessful at attaching to other heterocyst-forming cyanobacteria. In the 1998 Microbial Diversity course, another group amplified 16S rDNA from a culture containing the Anabaena sp. and the epibiont (2-membered culture). The non-Anabaena, amplified sequence was then determined to be most closely related to Zoogloea ramigera. Attempts to culture this epibiont or confirm that the “Zoogloea-like” sequence belonged to the epibiont were unsuccessful and therefore the identity of the epibiont was not confirmed. In the study reported here, this heterotrophic epibiont of the previously described Anabaena sp. was successfully grown aero...
To examine phylogenetic identity and metabolic activity of individual cells in complex microbial ... more To examine phylogenetic identity and metabolic activity of individual cells in complex microbial communities, we developed a method which combines rRNA-based in situ hybridization with stable isotope imaging based on nanometer-scale secondary-ion mass spectrometry (NanoSIMS). Fluorine or bromine atoms were introduced into cells via 16S rRNA-targeted probes, which enabled phylogenetic identification of individual cells by NanoSIMS imaging. To overcome the natural fluorine and bromine backgrounds, we modified the current catalyzed reporter deposition fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) technique by using halogen-containing fluorescently labeled tyramides as substrates for the enzymatic tyramide deposition. Thereby, we obtained an enhanced element labeling of microbial cells by FISH (EL-FISH). The relative cellular abundance of fluorine or bromine after EL-FISH exceeded natural background concentrations by up to 180-fold and allowed us to distinguish target from non-target cells ...
During the COVID-19 pandemic, wastewater surveillance was widely used to monitor temporal and geo... more During the COVID-19 pandemic, wastewater surveillance was widely used to monitor temporal and geographical infection trends. Using this as a foundation, a statewide program for routine wastewater monitoring of gastrointestinal pathogens was established in Oklahoma. The results from 18 months of surveillance showed that wastewater concentrations of Salmonella, Campylobacter, and norovirus exhibit similar seasonal patterns to those observed in reported human cases (F = 4–29, p < 0.05) and that wastewater can serve as an early warning tool for increases in cases, offering between one- and two-weeks lead time. Approximately one third of outbreak alerts in wastewater correlated in time with confirmed outbreaks of Salmonella or Campylobacter and our results further indicated that several outbreaks are likely to go undetected through the traditional surveillance approach currently in place. Better understanding of the true distribution and burden of gastrointestinal infections ultimatel...
A group from the Microbial Diversity course in 1997 isolated an Anabaena sp. from School Street M... more A group from the Microbial Diversity course in 1997 isolated an Anabaena sp. from School Street Marsh in Woods Hole, MA that was seen to have bacterial epibionts strictly associated with only the cell wall of the Anabaena heterocysts. John Waterbury and Elinor Ament were able to isolate the Anabaena sp. free of its epibionts and found that the epibiont was unsuccessful at attaching to other heterocyst-forming cyanobacteria. In the 1998 Microbial Diversity course, another group amplified 16S rDNA from a culture containing the Anabaena sp. and the epibiont (2-membered culture). The non-Anabaena, amplified sequence was then determined to be most closely related to Zoogloea ramigera. Attempts to culture this epibiont or confirm that the “Zoogloea-like” sequence belonged to the epibiont were unsuccessful and therefore the identity of the epibiont was not confirmed. In the study reported here, this heterotrophic epibiont of the previously described Anabaena sp. was successfully grown aero...
To examine phylogenetic identity and metabolic activity of individual cells in complex microbial ... more To examine phylogenetic identity and metabolic activity of individual cells in complex microbial communities, we developed a method which combines rRNA-based in situ hybridization with stable isotope imaging based on nanometer-scale secondary-ion mass spectrometry (NanoSIMS). Fluorine or bromine atoms were introduced into cells via 16S rRNA-targeted probes, which enabled phylogenetic identification of individual cells by NanoSIMS imaging. To overcome the natural fluorine and bromine backgrounds, we modified the current catalyzed reporter deposition fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) technique by using halogen-containing fluorescently labeled tyramides as substrates for the enzymatic tyramide deposition. Thereby, we obtained an enhanced element labeling of microbial cells by FISH (EL-FISH). The relative cellular abundance of fluorine or bromine after EL-FISH exceeded natural background concentrations by up to 180-fold and allowed us to distinguish target from non-target cells ...
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