KINETICS OFOF PHOSPHOROUS UPTAKE BY MULTIPLYING BACTERIAL CELLS

Abstract

Water, a basic need of humanbeing, is a potential carrier of germs responsible for diseases. Supply of safe and potable water is the basic duty of a public health engineer. The conventional methods for bacterial quality assessment of water, require 48 to 72 hours time for confirmed results and by that time water is distributed to consumers and water borne diseases spread. The utility of conventional method is reduced by this fact and consequently the need for a rapid test enumerating bacteria. The use of radio isotopes in water quality assessment has reduced the time of test drastically. It was pointed out by Ic-hanna18 that the length of time may be reduced to one hour by employing modified coprecipitation technique for multiplying cells. The technique (entitled "Modified Coprecipitation Test") deals with multiplying cells and utilises the radioisotope phosphorous32. It measures phosphorous uptake in phosphoprotein and nucleic acid protein of living cells and yields results in one hour. Since the correlation between bacterial population and phosphorous uptake has been exhibited to be linear, the method promises an absolute utility. The applicability of rapid tests has been checked on samples drawn from some surface and subsurface sources of water