Recent developments in waterborne pathogen detection technologies

Abstract

Waterborne pathogens find their way into water bodies through contamination of fecal discharge, stormwater run-offs, agriculture and industrial activities, and poor water infrastructure. These organisms are responsible for causing diarrheal, gastroenteritis, cholera, and typhoid diseases which raise an alarming sense on public human health due to the high mortality rate, especially in children. Several studies have indicated that these waterborne diseases can be managed by monitoring pathogens in water using traditional culture-based and molecular techniques. However, these methods have shown several setbacks such as the longer duration for detection and the inability to detect pathogens at low concentrations. Effective management of these diseases requires rapid, sensitive, highly selective, fast, and efficient economic methods to monitor pathogens in water. Since the creation of biosensors, these tools have been applied and shown the ability to detect pathogens at low concentrations. The highlights of biosensor systems are that they are fast, portable, easy to use, highly sensitive, and specific. The capabilities of biosensors have given these tools exposure to be widely applied in detecting pharmaceutical pollutants, pesticides, toxins, residues of detergents, and cosmetics from household activities in soil and water. With such difficulties faced for detecting waterborne pathogens, this review evaluates the effectiveness of technologies for waterborne pathogens detection and their drawbacks. It further highlights biosensors as the current reliable method available for detecting pathogens in water and its future capabilities in sustaining safe potable water.

Keywords: Biosensors; Chemiluminescence; Optical biosensors; PCR detection techniques; Water-borne pathogens.

Fig. 1

A schematic diagram showing the process of using microbiological methods for monitoring pathogens in water (McCoy & Rosenblatt, 2015)

Fig. 2

a Schematic of the effective and sensitive method of nucleic acid extraction using coaxial channel with magnetic silica beads; b schematic of the DNA extraction device; c schematic of the coaxial channel with the magnetic silica beads; d schematic of the aligner fabricated by the 3D printer; and e the coaxial channel. QuanPLEX, Each-Reach, Qingdao, Shandong, China. MSB magnetic silica beads (Zhang et al., 2018)

Fig. 3

Fundamental structure of biosensor, showing the basic components of biosensor (Rathee et al., ; Huang et al., 2017)

Fig. 4

a, b Performance tests of the Cryptosporidium sensor chip during SPR-based inhibition assay. Detection 1: C. parvum oocyst in HBS-EP buffer; Detection 2: mixture of Bacillus stearothermophilus spore, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, Escherichia coli, and C. parvum oocyst in HBS-EP buffer; Detection 3: C. parvum oocyst in tap water; and Detection 4: C. parvum oocyst in reservoir water. The concentrations of the used microorganisms were 1 × 10⁵ cells ml⁻¹ in all cases. c Detection range of C. parvum oocysts in the SPR-based inhibition assay method using the anti-mouse IgM-arrayed Cryptosporidium sensor chip (R.² = 0.9987, n = 5) (Kang et al., 2008)