Potential biosentinels of human waste in marine coastal waters: Bioaccumulation of human noroviruses and enteroviruses from sewage-polluted waters by indigenous mollusks

A major problem of existing methods to monitor for viral pathogens in large bodies of water (i.e., coastal waters) is in the initial viral recovery and concentration of these viruses. In this report, the indigenous filter-feeding bivalve mollusk, Isognomon sp., ubiquitous in the Indo-Pacific area, has been used successfully in this critical initial sequence (virus recovery) to bioaccumulate human enteropathogenic viruses from seawater seeded experimentally with either raw sewage or human norovirus-positive stool samples. Characteristic amplicons representing the human noroviruses (213 bp) and enteroviruses (196 bp) were detected by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) employing specific primers. The data indicate the high feasibility of employing these mollusks to serve as practical biosentinels of waters contaminated with sewage in coastal and island communities.