Date of Award:

5-1-1990

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Biology

Department name when degree awarded

Biology

Committee Chair(s)

Bill B. Barnett

Committee

Bill B. Barnett

Committee

Robert W. Sidwell

Committee

Ronald C. Sims

Abstract

Viruses may be concentrated from culinary water by adsorption to filters. The quantification of these adsorbed viruses requires that they first be eluted from the filters. The elution of poliovirus and reovirus from charge-modified filters was studied in this work. This report describes the effect of varying the pH and composition of several different elution buffers upon the efficiency of virus elution from Virozorb 1 MDS filters. Presumably, the attraction between the virus and the filter media is through ionic interaction or hydrogen bonding or both. To neutralize ionic attraction forces, elution buffer pH was varied so that both the virus and filter carried the same ionic charge. The nonionic detergent, monolaurate polyoxyethylenesorbitan (Tween 20), was used to disrupt hydrogen bonding. These studies demonstrated that ionic charge plays the major role in virus elution, while hydrogen bonding plays a lesser role. The elution buffer that produced optimum recovery for both poliovirus and reovirus was a solution of 3% beef extract with 0.05% Tween 20 at pH 9.0, which resulted in elution efficiencies of 95% for poliovirus and 94% for reovirus.

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