The present invention relates to methods for deactivation of viruses to harmless products using an appropriate fluence of OH radicals for treatment of the surface of a liquid contaminated with viruses. In particular, the current invention relates to methods for deactivation of plant viruses, Potato virus Y as an example, in polluted water likely to be used for watering fields where selected plants sensitive to said virus are grown.
F.35 Other
COBISS.SI-ID: 4955215Sometimes referred to as the fourth state of matter, plasma is an ionized gas. In scientific research, plasma is used for various purposes. Among promising features is its ability to destroy harmful microbes in different environments including water. UV radiation, charged particles, and reactive oxygen and/or nitrogen species are plasma’s constituents that have great antimicrobial properties–these reactive species are believed to be the most important in terms of microbe destruction. Plasma might also be the future technology for cleansing the leftover traces of man-made chemical contaminants in water, from toxic dyes to drugs. Research has also indicated that crops or seeds treated with plasma-treated water are more resistant to diseases and can germinate faster, thus producing a higher yield crop. This type of water management might be a potential future technology that will reduce the use of unnecessary chemicals in water cleansing, not only for industrial and agricultural use but also for safe human consumption. As a potential technology that might be widely used, the treatment of water with plasma is implemented in the installation–plasma-treated water is both the actual agent of change and the symbol of growth and purity. The Little Fountain (Fontana) is a custom made device that uses ultrasonic piezotechnology. The ceramic disk transforms electric energy into vibration. The sound produced by this transducer is beyond the hearing range of humans. Submerged in water, it vibrates, and by doing so it deforms the structure of the water and disperses it into the air as approximately one-micron-sized droplets. These droplets form the fog which hangs throughout the space.
B.06 Other
COBISS.SI-ID: 5139279An increasing number of biotic and abiotic pollutants is only one of the reasons why lack of clean and safe water is one of the biggest problems we have to face today. The possibility of viruses being transmitted through water was neglected for decades, however, the rise in numbers of waterborne human and plant diseases due to suboptimal water disinfection, is changing the focus in this direction. Many water transmissible viruses are infectious in low dosage, stay infectious after long periods of time and can cause a plethora of diseases. For this reason, inactivation of viruses in water is extremely important. Since all the methods currently used for water decontamination have some negative properties, the search for alternative methods became very important. One such method that is environmentally friendly, easy to use, non-toxic, and could thus be used for water decontamination, is cold atmospheric plasma. We used cold argon plasma for inactivation of two morphologically different viruses in water samples: potato virus Y (PVY) and bacteriophage MS2, both of which can be successfully transmitted by water. PVY is a filamentous virus that can infect different plants but is the most important potato virus pathogen. MS2 is an icosahedral virus, used as a surrogate for enteric viruses transmitted by water. Compared to PVY, its genome is almost three times shorter. We determined success and a mode of virus inactivation with different methods: infectivity tests with either test plants or double layer plaque assay, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), real-time PCR, droplet digital PCR, transmission electron microscopy and optical emission spectroscopy. Despite the differences between the two model viruses used, we were able to inactivate or sufficiently decrease the concentration of both viruses in 10 ml water samples after short treatment times. We also proposed reactive oxygen species as the main mode of viral inactivation. Our results indicate that plasma could be a powerful tool for solving the problem of water scarcity as it could efficiently inactivate pathogenic microorganisms and with that make water safer for everyone.
B.04 Guest lecture
COBISS.SI-ID: 5082959