09.05.2007
Scientists at the University of Brighton have an unknown Sussex resident to thank for a breakthrough that could help Europe to clean up its rivers and bathing waters.
Dr Huw Taylor and Dr James Ebdon of the university's School of the Environment have isolated a strain of a harmless bacterium from the human gut that helps them show whether water is contaminated by human or animal faeces.
Working closely with colleagues at the University of Barcelona in Spain, they have developed a low-cost method to help the Environment Agency and other organisations around Europe to find the causes of and hence suggest the solutions to water pollution problems.
The success of the technique relied on the team's ability to isolate a bacterium that is only ever found in the faeces of humans and not the faeces of other animals - a more difficult task than one might think. "If a water sample is then shown to contain the viruses that have evolved to destroy this bacterium, we know that the water has, at some stage, been polluted with human faeces" explains Dr Taylor. "The solutions to contamination by urban sewage are very different to solving the problems caused by animal manure".
The Brighton scientists have published evidence in an international journal to suggest that the newly isolated bacterium (a member of the group known as Bacteroides - pictured above) is highly specific to humans. "Since its discovery, it has consistently signalled human pollution in samples from locations as diverse as Denmark and Uganda" says Dr Ebdon.
Now the US Environmental Protection Agency has taken an interest in the work and has invited Dr Taylor to present their work to the American water industry in Cincinnati this summer.
"Sometime last year, an unknown resident in Sussex flushed the toilet and released millions of bacteria into Southern Water's sewerage system. This is normal, but on this occasion, we were at the treatment plant ready to catch the bacteria and to isolate the one that fitted our needs."
"We've allowed the bacterium to multiply under laboratory conditions and now we're able to use the strain anywhere in the world."
The next group likely to use the Sussex bacterium in collaboration with the Brighton scientists is Professor Fujioka of the University of Hawaii. "We would like to thank the unknown local person who has certainly done the job for us", quipped Dr Taylor.
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