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4.2
Journals
Microorganisms
Special Issues
Surveillance of Pathogens in the Environment
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Surveillance of Pathogens in the Environment

A special issue of Microorganisms (ISSN 2076-2607). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Microbiology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 February 2026 | Viewed by 715

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Francesca Pennino

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Public Health, University of Naples Federico II, 80131 Naples, Italy
Interests: public health; infections; control of healthcare-associated infections; prevention; health problem; risks; healthcare systems; environmental hygiene; environmental contamination; safety

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue of the Microorganisms journal, entitled “Surveillance of Pathogens in the Environment”, aims to study pathogens present in environmental matrices such as water, wastewater, surfaces, air, and food. These samples can host viruses, bacteria, and fungi that can provide information about their contamination. In this regard, environmental surveillance can alert us to the possibility of tracking infection waves in the population and, at the same time, help us to identify possible sources of infection.

This Special Issue will collect the research of colleagues that have conducted environmental monitoring of pathogens in order to obtain information on different aspects of the circulation of pathogens in the environment (materials and methods for their identification or presence of pathogens in particular areas).

Dr. Francesca Pennino
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Microorganisms is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • pathogens
  • environment
  • surveillance
  • epidemiology
  • health
  • water
  • wastewater
  • surface
  • air
  • food

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

15 pages, 3123 KB  
Article
Canine Parvovirus and Vaccine-Origin Feline Panleukopenia Virus in Wastewater, Arizona, USA: July 2022–June 2023
by Jacqueline Vargas, Brenda Bermudez-Rivera, Izabella Block, Gray Shaffer, Lesley Estrada, Tegan Dadd, Tanner Dickerson, Courtney Curtis, Craig Woods, Erin M. Driver, Rolf U. Halden, Arvind Varsani, Matthew Scotch and Temitope O. C. Faleye
Microorganisms 2025, 13(9), 2124; https://doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms13092124 - 11 Sep 2025
Viewed by 456
Abstract
Canine parvovirus (CPV) is a virus of veterinary health significance and a member of the Parvoviridae family. Despite its clinical significance and global distribution, surveillance is often limited to cases serious enough to result in veterinary visit and/or hospitalization, thereby limiting our understanding [...] Read more.
Canine parvovirus (CPV) is a virus of veterinary health significance and a member of the Parvoviridae family. Despite its clinical significance and global distribution, surveillance is often limited to cases serious enough to result in veterinary visit and/or hospitalization, thereby limiting our understanding of its evolution and diversity. In this study, we coupled wastewater surveillance (WWS), long-range polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and long-read sequencing and demonstrate the utility of this approach for community-level monitoring of parvovirus diversity. We screened archived viral concentrates from wastewater (WW) collected monthly from July 2022 to June 2023 as part of a previous virus surveillance study from a population of ~500,000 people in Maricopa County, Arizona, USA. Using long-range PCR, the coding-complete sequences (~4.5 kb) were amplified as single contigs and sequenced on a long-read sequencer (MinION). Reads were trimmed, assembled, and contigs subjected to a bioinformatics workflow that includes phylogenetics, immuno-informatics and protein structure modelling. The ~4.5 kb amplicons were amplified from all the samples and sequenced. Twelve contigs (length: 4555 nt to 4675 nt: GC%: 35% to 36%) were assembled from 86,858 trimmed and size-selected reads (length 4400 nt–4900 nt) and all typed as parvoviruses. Overall, there were 11 CPV variants (2a, 2b and 2c) and 1 feline panleukopenia virus (FPV) variant. The FPV was 100% similar in the VP2 genomic region to the 1964 Johnson snow leopard strain present in the Felocell vaccine, suggesting recent shedding post-vaccination. For the CPVs, our analysis showed multiple amino acid substitutions in the VP2 and NS1 proteins, suggestive of host immune pressure and viral adaptation, respectively. The CPV variants clustered predominantly with North and South American variants, suggesting transboundary viral movement and multiple CPV-2c transmission chains seem evident. To the best of our knowledge, we here document the first detection of vaccine-origin FPV in WW. We show the presence of CPV-2a, 2b and 2c in the population sampled and provide evidence that suggests transmission of CPVs across the Americas. Our results also show that WWS coupled with long-range PCR and long-read sequencing is a feasible population-level complement to clinical case surveillance that also facilitates detection of vaccine-origin virus variants. The model we demonstrate here for tracking parvoviruses can also be easily extended to other DNA viruses of human and veterinary health significance. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Surveillance of Pathogens in the Environment)
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