Searching for Rapid Methods in Environmental Bacteriology

摘要

The search for rapid methods in sanitary bacteriology is more urgent today than ever before because of increased necessity for processing poorer quality source waters and controlling quality of sewage effluent discharges. Selection of criteria for rapid tests involving either modified conventional procedures or those that require special reagents and instrumentation must consider quantitative or qualitative results within a few hours, data of acceptable sensitivity, selectivity, and precision, and procedures that are amenable to average laboratory operations. The increased cost per test compared to conventional monitoring may be justified in terms or protection afforded to public health. The most promising candidate methods include: use of metabolic inducer compounds, radioisotope labeled substrates, specifically labeled fluorescent antisera and organism specific genetic probes.