Development of a Novel Virus Capture System Using Positively Charged Silica Matrix

The need for a simple, reliable, efficient, and inexpensive virus capture system is an essential step for detecting viruses, such as adenoviruses, caliciviruses, coxsackieviruses and echoviruses in Contaminant Candidate List 2 (CCL@), in water supplies. The currenly available methods are membrane-based techniques that require preconditioning water samples before filtration or are rather expensive per filter. Some filters are cumbersome and impossible to collect water sample is the field. The focus of the proposed researchis to develop a novel virus capture system that will be both cost-effective aned efficient for recovering viruses from water samples. An inexpensive porous silica matrix with high positive surface charge density produced by functionalized chemical groups and with large pores to allow through flow will be fabricated and evaluated for virus recovery. Elution buffer containing different surfactants will be investigated to optimize elution efficiency. Viruses should adsorb into positively charged porous sililca by colloid-like electrostatic attraction and dissociate when the surface chage of porous silica is neutralized of altered with surfactants. The positively chaged silica matrix can be packed into diferent size columns suitable for different types of water matrices. This generic virus capture filter cna be used at source water with a large column, drinking water with a medium size column, and others, It is more cost-effective to select the correct size column to fit the types of water sampled while using the same silica matrix-an adventage not available with the current membrane filters. The product can also be used of drinking water and wastewater security investigations in case of emergency response to viral contaminants. The proposed technology will be efficient in the recovery of viruses and very cost effective for water industries.