I am a 9th grade student from Manila and we're currently working on an investigatory project. We want to know how effective SODIS or solar water disinfection is. The purification method claims to be able to kill pathogen. We've just finished our methodology; we have not done to experiment yet.
There's one thing that concerns us: is it even possible to see pathogen in water using a microscope? We raised our concern to our teacher and at first she believes it is possible. However, she said that she was not sure because she mentioned that some stuff (I forgot what) are "cultured" before checking for pathogen like bacteria.
Answer
Yes your teacher is right. In a microscope you can see microorganisms. Now the question is to identify them as pathogens.
I guess what your teacher has in mind is to use specific culture mediums for different pathogens and see if anything is growing there, then you have a positive.
You could also do a PCR. This is extracting the DNA and amplify specific genes that you know belongs to pathogens.
But the most currently trendy analysis is metagenomics. Basically, you exctract the genetic material from the sample, then sequence and compare against public databases. This methodology allows the identification of everything that is there pathogens and non-pathogens.
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