Bacterial inactivation in water, DNA strand breaking, and membrane damage induced by ultraviolet-assisted titanium dioxide photocatalysis

• Photocatalytic disinfection of water using TiO2 and UV A, B and C domains.
• Inactivation of Escherichia coli, Listeria monocytogenes and Salmonella typhimurium using these techniques.
• Gel electrophoresis demonstrated damage in plasmid and genomic DNA of E. coli TOP10.
• Scanning electron and confocal laser microscopy demonstrated bacterial membrane damage.

The effects of UV-assisted TiO2-photocatalytic oxidation (PCO) inactivation of pathogenic bacteria (Escherichia coli O157:H7, Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella typhimurium) in a liquid culture using different domains of UV irradiation (A, B and C) were evaluated. Structural changes in super-coiled plasmid DNA (pUC19) and genomic DNA of E. coli were observed using gel electrophoresis to demonstrate the photodynamic DNA strand breaking activity of UV-assisted TiO2-PCO. Membrane damage in bacterial cells was observed using both a scanning electron microscope (SEM) and a confocal laser scanning microscope (CLSM). Both UVC-TiO2-PCO and UVC alone resulted in an earlier bactericidal phase (initial counts of approximately 6 log CFU/mL) in 60 s and 90 s, respectively, in liquid culture. UVC-TiO2-PCO treatment for 6 min converted all plasmid DNA to the linear form; however, under UVC irradiation alone, super-coiled DNA remained. Prolonged UVC-TiO2-PCO treatment resulted in structural changes in genomic DNA from E. coli. SEM observations revealed that bacteria suffered severe visible cell damage after UVC-TiO2-PCO treatment for 30–60 min. S. typhimurium cells showed visible damage after 30 min, which was confirmed using CLSM. All treated cells were stained red using propidium iodide under a fluorescent light.