Application of Coliphage in treatment of wastewater

Phages have diverse applications in the domains of therapeutics, diagnostics, bioremediation, and biotechnology. Coliphages are a group of viruses that infect coliform bacteria. In the last decade, coliphages have gained significant attention for their application in sewage water treatment as a tool to reduce coliform load. The main objective of this study was to treat sewage water with coliphage and evaluate it for reduction in coliform count. In the current study, isolation, enrichment, and enumeration of coliphage was carried out from a sewage sample. The titre of the enriched phage lysate was estimated to be 4.89 x 107 pfu/ml. The pre-treated sewage sample was quantitated for coliform count by the Most probable number (MPN) method, and the count was found to be >2400/100 ml. Post-treatment, the MPN of the phage-treated sewage sample was found to be reduced. After eight hours of incubation, an 80-fold reduction (30 org/100 ml) in MPN count was observed for the treated sewage sample. Chemical oxygen demand (COD) of pretreated and post-treated sewage samples was estimated, and the efficiency of the treatment was calculated to be 50.01%. The current study suggests the application of bacteriophage as a complementary tool for the reduction of coliform in wastewater along with other treatment procedures.