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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, June 2008, p. 3774-3782, Vol. 74, No. 12
0099-2240/08/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/AEM.02049-07
Copyright © 2008, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Center of Advanced Materials for the Purification of Water with Systems, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering,1 Department of Microbiology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 618012
Received 7 September 2007/ Accepted 10 April 2008
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Free chlorine, the most common disinfectant currently used by U.S. drinking water utilities, is very effective for inactivating adenovirus (2). However, many utilities will be switching to alternative disinfection schemes to comply with the recently promulgated Long Term 2 Enhanced Surface Water Treatment Rule (LT2ESWTR) (45) and Stage 2 Disinfectants and Disinfection By-products Rule (Stage 2 DBPR) (44). An alternative treatment approach under consideration is to use UV light (UV) for primary disinfection at the treatment plant, followed by the use of combined chlorine species (predominantly monochloramine) in the distribution system. This disinfection alternative is being considered because UV can effectively inactivate Cryptosporidium parvum oocysts, the primary waterborne pathogen addressed in LT2ESWTR, which is highly resistant to free chlorine inactivation. Additionally, compared to free chlorine, monochloramine forms lower levels of trihalomethanes and haloacetic acids regulated under the Stage 2 DBPR.
This alternative method of disinfection has its drawbacks; switching from free chlorine to UV treatment may result in water containing active virus particles since viruses are more resistant to UV inactivation than are protozoan (oo)cysts. Adenovirus, in particular, is more resistant to UV than any other viral, bacterial, and protozoan pathogen of current concern in drinking water (13, 17, 24, 26, 29, 38, 41, 43, 50). Furthermore, adenovirus is also resistant to inactivation by monochloramine (1, 39), suggesting that a UV-monochloramine treatment scheme would be ineffective. Thus, waterborne adenovirus, which was not a concern historically because of its susceptibility to free chlorine inactivation (2), is now emerging as a health risk issue. As an example of this growing concern, adenovirus is currently included in the Drinking Water Contaminant Candidate List 2 for potential future regulatory development (46). Such regulatory decisions would require a comprehensive characterization of the inactivation kinetics of adenovirus with both UV and monochloramine under the range of conditions of relevance to drinking water disinfection. Furthermore, elucidation of the corresponding inactivation mechanisms is required to better understand the relatively weak effect of UV and monochloramine on adenovirus particles and to guide the development of effective disinfection methods to neutralize adenovirus in drinking water.
One approach for assessing the inactivation mechanism of UV or monochloramine is to determine the step of the adenovirus life cycle that is inhibited by the disinfectant. This approach is possible since the molecular steps of the adenovirus life cycle have been well characterized (3, 6, 16, 36). An event occurring after virus attachment and subsequent entry into the host cell is the synthesis of viral early proteins, such as the E1A product. Then, after viral genomic DNA replication, late genes are synthesized to create core components of the virion. The genetic material is packaged into particles, creating mature virions, which are released from the host cell via lysis.
The objective of this study is to elucidate the mechanisms of adenovirus serotype 2 inactivation with either UV light or monochloramine by assessing the potential inhibition of two key steps of the adenovirus life cycle, the synthesis of E1A proteins and the replication of viral DNA. Results shown here demonstrate that each disinfectant has a unique effect on viral replication.
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UV treatment of adenovirus.
Two replicate experiments (UV-1 and UV-2) were performed to characterize the kinetics of UV inactivation for adenovirus serotype 2 to determine the optimal dosage of UV-C treatment for future studies. For these experiments, purified virions were tested in 0.01 M PBS at pH 8.0 ± 0.2 and ambient temperature (22 ± 2°C). Additionally, a collimated beam system (Calgon Carbon Corporation, Pittsburgh, PA) installed with a low-pressure Hg lamp emitting a narrow emission spectrum centered at 254 nm was used as the UV-C source. The light intensity used was I = 0.043 ± 0.003 mW/cm2, and adenovirus samples were collected at various times corresponding to light fluences (i.e., IT or product of light intensity and contact time) in the range of 10 to 160 mJ/cm2.
Three additional UV disinfection experiments (UV-M-1, UV-M-2, and UV-M-3) were performed to assess the effect of UV treatment on the virus life cycle, using the same conditions described above, except that two fluences of <30 mJ/cm2 (samples S1 and S2) were utilized, with the goal of having adenovirus survivals, as measured by the plaque assay described under "Virus viability assay," greater than approximately 10%. The limited exposure to UV was selected so that signals obtained would be above the detection limit of the molecular techniques described under "Immunoblotting assay" and "DNA analysis using a modified Southern blot assay (slot blotting)."
For all of the experiments where adenovirus was treated with UV-C, virus stock was added to 15 ml of PBS in a 60-mm-diameter tissue culture dish to achieve an initial virus titer N0 = (3.8 ± 3.3) x 106 PFU/ml (N0 values for specific experiments are listed in Table 1). The reactor was then placed under the light beam of the collimated system, mixed continuously by magnetic stirring, and removed from the light beam once the target IT value was reached. UV fluences were determined by radiometry (4). Treated virions were then used to infect A-549 cellular monolayers as described below.
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TABLE 1. Experimental conditions for inactivating adenovirus type 2 virions with UV-C irradiationa
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TABLE 2. Experimental conditions for inactivating adenovirus type 2 virions with monochloraminea
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The first sample of each experiment, taken within approximately 10 to 20 s, was used as the initial concentration of the virus suspension, N0 (Table 2), to plot inactivation curves. Control reactors without disinfectant addition, tested at each pH and temperature combination, confirmed that no measurable virus inactivation took place within such a short initial exposure, and they also revealed that in the absence of monochloramine viruses remained viable for the duration of all disinfection experiments under the conditions investigated.
Virus viability assay.
Adenovirus viability was determined by plaque assays (47) using A-549 cells. Three days prior to the plaque assay, A-549 cells were placed in T-25 tissue culture flasks at a concentration of (3.5 ± 0.5) x 106 cells per flask. On the day of the plaque assay, 0.4 ml of virus samples at appropriate dilutions was inoculated onto the cellular monolayers. After a 90-min absorption period, 10 ml of an overlay mixture was added to each flask. The overlay mixture was prepared by mixing 100 ml of 3% autoclaved agar solution, kept at 57°C, with 100 ml of nutrient mixture. The nutrient mixture was prepared by mixing 83 ml of 2x minimum essential medium, 3 ml FBS, 1 ml 1 M MgCl2, 2 ml 0.1% neutral red, and 5 ml sterile distilled deionized water. The nutrient mixture was incubated at 37°C and dosed with 6 ml of 7.5% sodium bicarbonate solution immediately before mixing with the agar solution. The overlaid flasks were incubated at 37°C under humidified air containing 5% CO2. PFU were enumerated daily 3 to 10 days later. Virus titers were calculated by assessing the number of plaques present in flasks containing 20 to 300 PFU/plate at 10 days p.i. No significant increase in PFU was observed after day 10, and the A-549 cell monolayer started to degrade after day 10, resulting in disappearance of the plaques (data not shown).
Cell infection for E1A protein synthesis and DNA replication assessment.
Similar to the sampling procedure for viability assessment, sample volumes of 3 ml were withdrawn from the reactor at predetermined times corresponding to two different levels of inactivation and transferred to 15-ml centrifuge tubes, which also contained 0.3 ml of 0.35% (wt/vol) sodium thiosulfate to quench the residual disinfectant. The UV and quenched monochloramine samples were kept on ice until the last sample was taken at time tf listed in Tables 1 and 2 and then used to infect A-549 cell monolayers. Each cell monolayer was prepared 1 day prior to virus infection by plating approximately 5 x 105 A-549 cells into the wells of a 60-mm tissue culture dish and incubated overnight at 37°C inside a 5% CO2 incubator. Cells were infected with 0.5 ml of either untreated/control (C), UV-treated, or monochloramine-treated (S1 and S2) virions at an MOI of 5 PFU/cell, based on the pretreatment titer. The volume added for disinfected samples (S1 and S2) was the same as that for the control (C), such that the MOI calculated from plaque formation was decreased by a factor equal to the survival ratio. After a 90-min absorption phase, the virus-containing suspension was aspirated and 2 ml of "complete" medium (Ham's F-12K medium [Fisher Scientific, Waltham, MA] containing 10% FBS, 100 U/ml of penicillin, 100 µg/ml of streptomycin, and 0.25 µg/ml of amphotericin B) was added to cellular monolayers. Virus inoculum suspended in the 0.01 M, pH 8 PBS possessed the same ability to infect cells as that of viruses suspended in the complete medium (data not shown). The infected monolayer was incubated at 37°C and harvested at either 12 or 24 h p.i., and samples were prepared for subsequent immunoblotting or slot blotting procedures (see below).
Immunoblotting assay.
Cells previously infected with either untreated virions (C) or treated virions (S1 and S2) were harvested at 12 h p.i. To this end, the infected cellular monolayer was rinsed three times with complete medium, and cells were removed from the tissue culture dish by scraping. Cells were collected by centrifugation at 230 x g centrifugation at 4°C for 10 min. Supernatants were removed, and the cellular pellets were resuspended in 100 µl of cytoplasmic extraction buffer (10 mM HEPES, 10 mM KCl, 0.1 mM EDTA [pH 8.0], 0.1 mM EGTA, 1 mM dithiothreitol, 0.5 mM phenylmethylsulfonyl fluoride, 0.05% NP-40, 2 µg/ml aprotinin, 0.5 µg/ml leupeptin, 20 mM β-glycerophosphate, 10 mM NaF, 1 mM Na3VO4) containing 1% HALT protease inhibitor (Pierce Biotechnology, Rockford, IL). After a 10-min incubation period on ice, samples were centrifuged at 10,000 x g for 10 min. Supernatants were removed to new tubes and stored at –20°C. Total protein (cellular and viral) concentrations for each sample were measured by a bicinchoninic acid assay (40) using a BCA Protein Assay kit (Pierce Biotechnology, Rockford, IL). For all experiments, equal amounts of cytoplasmic extracts were further analyzed by immunoblotting (see below). Cytoplasmic extracts were mixed with 5x ImmunoPure Non-reducing Lane Marker Sample Buffer (Pierce Biotechnology, Rockford, IL) and 5% 2-mercaptoethanol. Samples were boiled for 5 min and then incubated on ice. Next, samples were loaded into individual wells of a sodium dodecyl sulfate-12% polyacrylamide gel, and the proteins were separated by using electrophoresis. The proteins were then electrophoretically transferred to a polyvinylidene fluoride membrane (Millipore, Billerica, MA), and the membrane was incubated in Tris-buffered saline (TBS) containing 0.1% Tween 20 (TBS-T) and 5% nonfat dry milk. After a 30-min incubation period at room temperature, membranes were incubated with mouse monoclonal anti-E1A immunoglobulin G (M73; Santa Cruz Biotechnology, Santa Cruz, CA), diluted 1:500. After incubation either overnight at 4°C or for 1 h at room temperature, membranes were washed in TBS-T containing 0.5% nonfat dry milk three times to remove excess antibody. Membranes were incubated with horseradish peroxidase-conjugated immunoglobulin G specific for mouse antibodies (Fisher Scientific, Waltham, MA; 1:12,000 dilution) for 1 h at room temperature. Interactions between the anti-E1A antibody and E1A proteins, if present, were then detected via a chemiluminescent reaction using the Supersignal West Femto system (Pierce Biotechnology, Rockford, IL), and the signal was visualized on X-ray film (Kodak, Rochester, NY). To quantify the chemiluminescence signals, X-ray films were digitized and then analyzed by densitometry, using the Scion Image software (Scion Corporation, Frederick, MD). The signals were quantified using the Analyzing One-Dimensional Electrophoretic Gels program of Scion Image, with the application of a macro called GelPlot2. This method was used to compare the ratio of band density only within each film image, where the film exposure time was identical. A value for E1A-specific signal was computed by dividing the value of signal obtained from lanes containing virus-infected cell lysates by the value of signal from lanes containing lysates of untreated viruses. Lysates from uninfected cells were harvested as mentioned above and were used as negative controls. Blots were reprobed to detect cellular actin protein levels by using rabbit polyclonal antiactin antibodies, diluted at 1:1,000 (Sigma-Aldrich, St. Louis, MO). After washing, membranes were incubated with horseradish peroxidase-conjugated goat anti-rabbit antibodies (Fisher Scientific, Waltham, MA; 1:10,000 dilution). Blots were incubated with Supersignal West Pico reagents (Pierce Biotechnology, Rockford, IL), and chemiluminescence was detected with X-ray film (Kodak, Rochester, NY).
DNA analysis using a modified Southern blot assay (slot blotting).
After absorption of virus into A-549 cellular monolayers, infected monolayers were harvested at 24 h p.i. At this time, monolayers were rinsed three times with complete medium. Next, cellular monolayers were detached from their plates by scraping, and detached cells were collected by centrifugation at 230 x g and 4°C for 10 min. The supernatant was aspirated, and the cellular pellets were resuspended in PBS for subsequent DNA extraction. Total DNA (cellular and viral) was extracted from harvested cells using the QIAamp blood DNA kit (Qiagen Inc., Valencia, CA), following the manufacturer's instructions, resulting in 200 µl of DNA samples in Tris-Cl-EDTA solution. The DNA samples were stored at –20°C. Total DNA concentrations for all samples were measured spectrophotometrically at a wavelength of 260 nm.
DNA samples were either used directly or diluted 1:5 in Tris-EDTA buffer (pH 8.0) for a final volume of 50 µl. Samples were boiled for 5 min and immediately cooled on ice. Next, each sample was loaded onto a Hybond-N positively charged nylon membrane (Amersham Biosciences, Piscataway, NJ) by using a Hoefer PR 648 slot blot manifold (Hoefer Inc., San Francisco, CA) connected to a vacuum device. Nylon membranes containing DNA samples were UV cross linked. The presence of adenovirus genomes was detected by incubating membranes with an alkaline phosphatase-labeled probe that specifically recognized a portion of the adenovirus genome. The primers utilized to amplify adenovirus type 2 DNA are ADFOR (5'-GGCCCTAGACAAATATTACGCGCTAG-3') and ADREV (5'-GGATTGAAGCCAATATGATAATGAGGGGG-3'). These primers were designed such that the N terminus of the linear double-stranded DNA genome of adenovirus 2, specifically nucleotides 25 to 300, would be PCR amplified. A method using a similar approach and using a similar amplified portion of the adenovirus genome was used previously to assess viral genomic DNA levels by slot blotting (11). The 300-bp amplicon was purified by using the PCR product purification kit (Qiagen Inc., Valencia, CA) and subsequently labeled with alkaline phosphatase using the AlkPhos Direct Labeling and Detection System (Amersham Biosciences, Piscataway, NJ). The modified probe was suspended in hybridization buffer (prepared as directed for the CDP-Star chemiluminescent detection system; Amersham Biosciences, Piscataway, NJ) and incubated with the viral DNA-containing nylon membrane overnight at 65°C. After overnight incubation, the membrane was washed with primary and secondary wash buffers, per the manufacturer's instructions, to remove excess nonspecifically bound probes. The membrane was incubated with chemiluminescence reagents from the CDP-Star chemiluminescent detection system (Amersham Biosciences, Piscataway, NJ). The membrane was exposed to X-ray film, and chemiluminescence signals were developed. Lysate from uninfected cells was harvested as mentioned above and was used as a negative control. The signal density for this control sample, quantified with the Scion Image software following the same protocol described for E1A analysis under "Immunoblotting assay," was below detection.
Statistical analysis.
Virus titers were determined by weighed regression analysis (20). Statistical differences among adenovirus survival ratios and normalized viral E1A and DNA concentrations of different samples were assessed by a single-factor analysis of variance (ANOVA) test using MS Excel (a one-way, fixed-effects ANOVA). An independent MS Excel two-tailed, two-sample t test assuming unequal variances was used for an analysis comparing normalized E1A protein concentrations with adenovirus survival ratios.
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FIG. 1. Inactivation kinetics of adenovirus serotype 2 with UV light at pH 8 and room temperature. The continuous line was obtained by simultaneous fitting of UV-1 and UV-2 experiments with equation 1. The initial virus titers for each experiment are listed in Table 1. IT values for UV-C-treated samples S1 and S2 are given in Table 3.
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FIG. 2. Kinetics of monochloramine inactivation for adenovirus serotype 2 obtained in the present study (star symbols) and those previously reported (39) (other symbols). Continuous lines represent data previously reported for monochloramine treatment at pH 8 and pH 10 (39), while dashed lines represent data obtained from fitting experiments MN-M-1 (black stars), MN-M-2 (white stars), and MN-M-3 (gray stars) performed in the present study (Table 2) with equation 1 using previously reported k (39) and N1/N0 as the fitting parameter.
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Effect of UV disinfection on E1A protein synthesis and DNA replication.
After observation that UV irradiation of adenovirus decreased the number of functional virions, as measured by plaque assays, an effort was made to investigate how UV irradiation affected the virion by detecting the portion of the virus life cycle that was halted during infection with these treated virions. UV irradiation is known to damage both the genome (5, 27, 33) and capsid proteins (28) of viruses. Thus, E1A protein synthesis was detected by immunoblotting as a measure of assessing the ability of the disinfected viral capsid to enter the host cell and to deliver functional genetic material to the host cell nucleus. Genomic replication, an event that occurs post-E1A production, was measured by slot blotting as a method for detecting whether UV irradiation damaged the DNA genome.
To detect the effect of UV irradiation on the ability of virions to produce E1A proteins in host cells, cells were harvested 12 h p.i. and cytoplasmic extracts were assessed for E1A proteins by immunoblotting. Previous reports observed adenovirus E1A protein expression as early as 8 h p.i. (51). Thus, a 12-h time point, in which E1A protein synthesis was predicted to be easily detected, was chosen. As shown in Fig. 3A, lysates from cells infected with untreated virions contain E1A proteins, as indicated by a doublet that represents the major 12S and 13S polypeptides translated from the E1A transcript. As expected, mock-infected cellular lysates did not produce any bands (data not shown). In contrast to untreated virions, the E1A-containing bands were less intense when lysates from cells infected with UV-treated viruses were probed (S1 and S2; see Table 3 for corresponding IT values). This effect was not due to lower protein contents in lysate samples, as actin levels were similar in each lane (Fig. 3A). Additionally, this was not due to E1A protein migration to the nucleus, since very low amounts of E1A proteins were present in nucleus-extracted proteins (data not shown). Using densitometry, the intensities of the bands representing E1A were compared, with the bands from lanes containing lysates from cells infected with untreated virions arbitrarily set to a value of 1.0.
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FIG. 3. Effect of UV irradiation on either E1A protein (A) or DNA synthesis (B). A-549 cells were mock infected or infected with virions (MOI = 5) that were either untreated or treated with UV-C (S1 and S2). IT values for samples S1 and S2 are given in Table 3.
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TABLE 3. Light fluences, survival ratios, and normalized E1A and DNA concentrations obtained for control (C) and disinfected samples (S1 and S2) for the inactivation of adenovirus serotype 2 with UV lighta
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Normalized E1A protein and DNA concentrations were obtained by averaging results similar to those shown in Fig. 3A and 3B for n replicates of each sample (Table 3). No data for E1A protein synthesis were obtained for samples derived from experiments UV-M-1 and UV-M-3 due to weak signal problems. Similarly, no data for viral genomic replication were reported for samples derived from experiment UV-M-1, due to background interference. Sample composite average normalized E1A protein and DNA concentrations were obtained for the control and S1 and S2 samples by averaging the corresponding results of experiments UV-M-2 and UV-M-3 for E1A protein and experiments UV-M-1, UV-M-2, and UV-M-3 for DNA. The composite average values obtained are summarized in the three bottom rows of Table 3 and plotted in Fig. 4A together with the corresponding adenovirus survival ratios.
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FIG. 4. Sample composite averages and standard errors of normalized viral E1A protein (12 h p.i.) and DNA (24 h p.i.) concentrations and survival ratios for either untreated control (C) or virions treated (S1 and S2) with either UV light (A) or monochloramine (B). Average IT and CT values for samples S1 and S2 are given in Tables 3 and 4, respectively.
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Effect of monochloramine disinfection on viral E1A protein synthesis and DNA replication.
Monochloramine disinfection also decreased the numbers of infectious viruses, as measured by plaque assays. Chemical disinfectants such as monochloramine have been reported to damage both the viral genome (22, 23, 25, 27) and capsid proteins (22, 28, 42). To assess which mechanism was more likely for monochloramine inactivation, monochloramine-disinfected virus samples were further analyzed for E1A protein synthesis and DNA replication, as a method to assess the ability of the disinfected viral capsid to enter the host cell and to deliver genetic material to the host cell nucleus and as a measure of DNA damage by monochloramine disinfection, respectively.
As would be expected, E1A protein production was readily detected in lysates from cells infected with untreated virions (Fig. 5A). These proteins were also present, although to a lesser extent, in lysates from cells infected with monochloramine-treated virions (Fig. 5A). Since the levels of cellular actin were detected in equal amounts from all three samples, the decreasing E1A band density in samples S1 and S2 is not due to lower protein contents in lysate samples. The E1A band intensities were measured and normalized to the intensity from the C sample, whose value was set to 1.
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FIG. 5. Effect of monochloramine disinfection on either E1A protein (A) or DNA synthesis (B). A-549 cells were mock infected or infected with virions (MOI = 5) that were either untreated (C) or treated with monochloramine (S1 and S2). CT values for samples S1 and S2 are given in Table 4.
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Normalized E1A protein and DNA concentrations obtained by averaging results similar to those shown in Fig. 5A and B for n replicates of each sample are shown in Table 4. No data on the detection of E1A proteins were obtained for samples from experiment MN-M-1 due to weak signal problems, and data measuring genomic DNA levels for a duplicate of experiment MN-M-2 could not be resolved due to background interference. The average values of normalized E1A protein and DNA concentrations were obtained for the control and S1 and S2 samples by averaging the corresponding results of experiments MN-M-2 and MN-M-3 for E1A protein levels and experiments MN-M-1, MN-M-2, and MN-M-3 for viral genomic DNA levels. The composite average values obtained are summarized in the three bottom rows of Table 4 and plotted in Fig. 4B together with the corresponding adenovirus survival ratios.
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TABLE 4. Disinfectant exposures, survival ratios, and normalized E1A and DNA concentrations obtained for control (C) and disinfected samples (S1 and S2) for the inactivation of adenovirus serotype 2 with monochloraminea
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UV disinfection.
As shown in Fig. 1, the kinetics of low-pressure UV disinfection obtained in this study was found to be within 60% of those previously reported for adenovirus serotypes 2 (1, 2, 13, 24, 37, 41), 1 and 6 (30), 5 (2), 15 (41), 40 (26, 43), and 41 (2, 19, 26) and only 11% lower than the average value adopted in the LT2ESWTR (45) based on an analysis of previous data sets. Reasons for the variability among data sets could be a decrease in resistance to UV associated with differences in freeze-thawing procedures (13, 30, 43), stock storage temperature and age (30), and interference by organic matter present in natural waters or associated with virus propagation (10, 43).
When host cell levels of E1A protein and viral DNA were measured after infection with UV-treated virions, it was observed that the normalized E1A protein signal in infected cells was not significantly different from the corresponding survival ratios. This observation could imply that UV irradiation damaged the surface proteins of the virions, decreasing the number of virions that can attach to and penetrate host cells and thereby inhibiting any of the life cycle steps that occur after attachment and entry (Fig. 6). These steps include viral protein synthesis and genomic DNA replication. Alternatively, decreased E1A protein synthesis could occur if UV irradiation affected DNA to the extent that the genome was unable to be transcribed or if the transcript from damaged DNA was unstable, truncated, or severely mutated (14). Since it has been shown that adenovirus serotype 2 was still able to attach and internalize in host cells after being exposed to UV at fluences as high as 4,000 mJ/cm2 (33), the current favored hypothesis is that UV irradiation's effects are due to the mutation of the input virus's genomes.
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FIG. 6. Replication cycle of adenovirus in host cell showing steps taking place prior to E1A protein synthesis that could have been inhibited by monochloramine and UV disinfection.
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Monochloramine disinfection.
Several differences were observed when the effects of monochloramine versus UV disinfection were studied. Temperature and pH have strong effects on the inactivation kinetics of monochloramine (39) but have no effect on UV neutralization. For monochloramine, the pH effect on its inactivation kinetics was illustrated when the kinetic curves at pH 8 versus pH 10 were compared (39) (Fig. 2). Because the mechanistic investigation of monochloramine was performed with virions treated with monochloramine at pH 8, it is important to recognize that the mechanism for inactivation might be different under different temperature and pH conditions.
For adenovirus disinfected with monochloramine at two different CT levels, the normalized levels of both E1A protein and viral DNA were not significantly different from the corresponding survival ratios measured by plaque assay (Fig. 4B). Consequently, the fraction of virions that were unable to complete their life cycle were also unable to synthesize E1A protein and replicate DNA. Similarly to UV disinfection, monochloramine inhibited E1A synthesis of the inactivated fraction either by reacting with key proteins involved in virion attachment and internalization, escape from endosome, translocation toward the cell nucleus, or nuclear delivery of DNA or by damaging the viral E1A genes (Fig. 6). Unlike UV disinfection, the viral DNA replication was not delayed after treatment with monochloramine.
These results indicate that treating virions either with monochloramine or with UV-C renders them unable to complete an infectious life cycle, specifically halting steps prior to viral early protein synthesis. This implies that the early portion of the life cycle is being compromised when either disinfectant is used. However, with differences in the inactivation kinetics and the presence of pH dependence in monochloramine but not in UV disinfection, it indicates that UV and monochloramine could inhibit different steps of the early portion in the adenovirus replication cycle (Fig. 6). Increasing applications of UV and monochloramine are predicted in response to the release of LT2ESWTR and the Stage 2 DBPR. However, adenovirus is not effectively controlled in drinking water by either UV or monochloramine, and therefore, it has emerged as a waterborne pathogen of public health concern. With the primary goal of water disinfection to control adenovirus and other waterborne pathogens in drinking water, a better understanding of these two disinfection methods is indispensable. Future efforts to further characterize the mechanisms of adenovirus inactivation with UV and monochloramine should focus on assessing which of the steps in the early portion of the virus life cycle (Fig. 6) is limiting by assessing potential damage to key proteins and E1A genes. Once the inactivation targets/mechanisms are known, it will facilitate further development of novel disinfection materials or more effective disinfection schemes for drinking water applications.
We thank Sandra McMasters from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Cell Media Facility and Daniel R. Dahling from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency National Risk Management Research Laboratory, Cincinnati, OH, for providing training and assistance on the cell culture technique during the early phase of this study.
Published ahead of print on 18 April 2008. ![]()
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