Somatic and F-specific coliphages are gaining ground as indicators of fecal/viral pollution. Guidelines and regulations worldwide for monitoring water, biosolids and food are including them as parameters to assess quality and treatment efficiency. Robust methods to detect and quantify both groups of phages in water samples have been launched by agencies such as the International Standardization Organization (ISO) and the USA Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). Although these methods have proved readily implementable in routine microbiology laboratories, faster and more user-friendly protocols will be highly welcome if coliphage detection becomes routine in water quality analysis. We here provide an overview of new approaches seeking to facilitate the detection of infectious coliphages included in guidelines and regulations. The improvements achieved suggest that streamlined kits able to provide results in a few hours at very reasonable costs will become available in the near future. The potential of molecular procedures and methods based on microelectronic sensors is also briefly discussed.

中文翻译：

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快速简便的方法检测大肠杆菌。

体细胞和F特异的噬菌体逐渐成为粪便/病毒污染的指标。全球范围内用于监测水，生物固体和食品的准则和法规将它们作为评估质量和处理效率的参数。国际标准化组织（ISO）和美国环境保护署（USEPA）等机构已经推出了检测和定量分析水样本中两组噬菌体的可靠方法。尽管已证明这些方法可在常规微生物学实验室中容易实施，但如果在水质分析中将大肠杆菌噬菌体检测作为常规方法，则更欢迎更快，更用户友好的操作规程。我们在这里提供了一些新方法的概述，这些新方法试图促进指南和法规中包含的感染性噬菌体的检测。所取得的改进表明，能够在几小时内以非常合理的成本提供结果的简化套件将在不久的将来面世。还简要讨论了基于微电子传感器的分子程序和方法的潜力。