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Environmental monitoring of bacterial contamination and antibiotic resistance patterns of the fecal coliforms isolated from Cauvery River, a major drinking water source in Karnataka, India

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The present study focuses prudent elucidation of microbial pollution and antibiotic sensitivity profiling of the fecal coliforms isolated from River Cauvery, a major drinking water source in Karnataka, India. Water samples were collected from ten hotspots during the year 2011–2012. The physiochemical characteristics and microbial count of water samples collected from most of the hotspots exhibited greater biological oxygen demand and bacterial count especially coliforms in comparison with control samples (p ≤ 0.01). The antibiotic sensitivity testing was performed using 48 antibiotics against the bacterial isolates by disk-diffusion assay. The current study showed that out of 848 bacterial isolates, 93.51 % (n = 793) of the isolates were found to be multidrug-resistant to most of the current generation antibiotics. Among the major isolates, 96.46 % (n = 273) of the isolates were found to be multidrug-resistant to 30 antibiotics and they were identified to be Escherichia coli by 16S rDNA gene sequencing. Similarly, 93.85 % (n = 107), 94.49 % (n = 103), and 90.22 % (n = 157) of the isolates exhibited multiple drug resistance to 32, 40, and 37 antibiotics, and they were identified to be Enterobacter cloacae, Pseudomonas trivialis, and Shigella sonnei, respectively. The molecular studies suggested the prevalence of bla TEM genes in all the four isolates and dhfr gene in Escherichia coli and Sh. sonnei. Analogously, most of the other Gram-negative bacteria were found to be multidrug-resistant and the Gram-positive bacteria, Staphylococcus spp. isolated from the water samples were found to be methicillin and vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. This is probably the first study elucidating the bacterial pollution and antibiotic sensitivity profiling of fecal coliforms isolated from River Cauvery, Karnataka, India.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Dr. Jeffery F. Miller, University of California, Los Angeles for his encouragement throughout the study. The authors also acknowledge Dr. Murugan Sevanan, Assistant Professor (SG), School of Biotechnology, Karunya University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu; and Dr. Shinomol K George, Assistant Professor, Department of Biotechnology, DSCE and Saurabh Yadav, Senior Research Fellow, MBU, IISc, Bangalore for their critical reading of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biotechnology Engineering, Dayananda Sagar Institutions, Bangalore, Karnataka, 560 078, India

    Sinosh Skariyachan, Arpitha Badarinath Mahajanakatti, Nisha Jayaprakash Grandhi, Akshatha Prasanna, Ballari Sen, Narasimha Sharma, Kiran S Vasist & Rajeswari Narayanappa

  2. Visvesvaraya Technological University, Belagavi, India

    Sinosh Skariyachan, Arpitha Badarinath Mahajanakatti, Nisha Jayaprakash Grandhi, Akshatha Prasanna, Ballari Sen, Narasimha Sharma, Kiran S Vasist & Rajeswari Narayanappa

  3. Molecular Biophysics Unit, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India

    Nisha Jayaprakash Grandhi

  4. Cognizant, Bangalore, India

    Narasimha Sharma

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  1. Sinosh Skariyachan
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Skariyachan, S., Mahajanakatti, A.B., Grandhi, N.J. et al. Environmental monitoring of bacterial contamination and antibiotic resistance patterns of the fecal coliforms isolated from Cauvery River, a major drinking water source in Karnataka, India. Environ Monit Assess 187, 279 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-015-4488-4

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