CrAssphage May Be Viable Markers of Contamination in Pristine and Contaminated River Water

Rivers support substantial populations and provide important ecosystem services. Despite the application of fecal coliform tests and other markers, we lack rapid and reproducible approaches for determining fecal contamination in rivers. Waterborne viral outbreaks have been reported even after fecal indicator bacteria (FIB) were suggested to be absent or below regulated levels of coliforms. This indicates a need to develop and apply improved indicators of pollutants in aquatic ecosystems. Here, we evaluate the viability of crAssphage as indicators of fecal contamination in two South African rivers. We assess the abundance, distribution, and diversity of these viruses in sites that had been predicted pristine or contaminated by FIB analysis. We show that crAssphage are ideal and sensitive markers for fecal contamination and describe novel clades of crAss-like phages. Known crAss-like subfamilies were unrepresented in our data, suggesting that the diversity of these viruses may reflect geographic locality and dependence.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1128/msystems.0128...

Authors: Nyasha Mafumo, Oliver K. I. Bezuidt, Wouter le Roux, Thulani P. Makhalanyane - https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8173-1678
Editor: Hans C. Bernstein

Published in mSystems® on 6 February 2023

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