Measurement and interpretation of microbial adenosine tri-phosphate (ATP) in aquatic environments

There is a widespread need for cultivation-free methods to quantify viability of natural microbial communities in aquatic environments. Adenosine tri-phosphate (ATP) is the energy currency of all living cells, and therefore a useful indicator of viability. A luminescence-based ATP kit/protocol was optimised in order to detect ATP concentrations as low as 0.0001 nM with a standard deviation of <5%. Using this method, more than 100 water samples from a variety of aquatic environments (drinking water, groundwater, bottled water, river water, lake water and wastewater effluent) were analysed for extracellular ATP and microbial ATP in comparison with flow-cytometric (FCM) parameters. Microbial ATP concentrations ranged between 3% and 97% of total ATP concentrations, and correlated well (R² = 0.8) with the concentrations of intact microbial cells (after staining with propidium iodide). From this correlation, we calculated an average ATP-per-cell value of 1.75 × 10⁻¹⁰ nmol/cell. An even better correlation (R² = 0.88) was observed between intact biovolume (derived from FCM scatter data) and microbial ATP concentrations, and an average ATP-per-biovolume value of 2.95 × 10⁻⁹ nmol/μm³ was calculated. These results support the use of ATP analysis for both routine monitoring and research purposes, and contribute towards a better interpretation of ATP data.