Assessment of the ATP assay for monitoring microbial water quality

Kateřina Khollová

Bachelor's thesis

Abstract:

The overall aim of the bachelor thesis was to assess the usability of the ATP measurement for observing microbial quality of water. The theoretical part of the work focused on the current state of measuring microbial contamination in the aquatic environment, available standardized protocols, and related Czech and EU legislations. The practical part of the work was performed on process water samples by using selected ATP methods and microbial cultivation techniques. The secondary objective was a comparison of the achieved results recalculated to the ME’s and CFU. According to the results that were obtained in the experimental part completed in laboratory, the DeltaTox, FLAA ATP Bioluminescent Assay and the SystemSURE Plus standards were all accurate and showed a high precision of the best fit. The achieved R2 values were higher than 0.98 for all used standard’s kits and the measuring devices. The measured water samples showed the similar ATP results using the SystemSURE Plus kit and the FLAA ATP Bioluminescent Assay kit. The results achieved for the DeltaTox kit was a significantly higher. The E. coli cultivation results revealed that one colony (CFU) isolated from the same water samples have the same but much higher content of ATP than it is used for the microbial equivalent (ME) recalculation. The correlation between CFU/mL and Number of cells/mL had showed to be high.

Keywords

free, total, CFU, ME, Escherichia coli, adenosine triphosphate, microorganisms, aquatic

Jazyk práce: English

Datum vytvoření / odevzdání či podání práce: 31. 3. 2024

Obhajoba závěrečné práce

• Obhajoba proběhla 28. 5. 2024
• Vedúci: doc. Ing. Lenka Wimmerová, MSc Ph.D.
• Oponent: Ljuba Zídková, externi

Czech University of Life Sciences Prague

Faculty of Environmental Sciences

Bachelor programme:
Environmental Engineering