Although UV254 is widely used as a disinfectant on a range of microorganisms, the impact that higher order genome structure and protein-genome interactions have on an organism’s reactivity remains poorly understood. Secondary structures such as stem-loops and pseudoknots can increase the compactness of nucleic acids, and potentially alter their photoreactivity. In this presentation, we will describe our work on the reactions in viral genomes during UV254 treatment. Four model viruses with different genome types and lengths were selected to represent viruses in the water environment, namely bacteriophage MS2, T3, f6 and murine norovirus. Following UV254 exposure to both naked genomes and genomes within intact virus particles, we analyzed the decay kinetics using RT-qPCR. For each virus, our preliminary results suggest that the degradation of both naked nucleic acids and nucleic acids within intact virons usually follow first-order decay kinetics, with naked nucleic acids reacting at a significantly faster rate than those encapsulated in a protein coat. This implies that higher-order genome structures and genome-protein interactions can impact viral genome reactivity. Our results also suggest that ssRNA genomes react faster with UV254 than dsRNA genomes, but slower with UV254 than dsDNA genomes. We will discuss the potential explanations for our observations and the implications for water treatment. Overall, our results shed light on the important photochemical reactions that take place in viral genomes during UV254 disinfecting treatments.

Impact of higher order nucleic acid structure on reactivity with UV254

255th National Meeting (2018)

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