Analytical Development and Applications to Drinking Water Research

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Contamination of food and water by pathogens is a major public health concern. The proposed research program contributes to the central goal of drinking water safety and health protection through better analytical detection and characterization of microbial and chemical contaminants. Our primary objective is to develop innovative analytical techniques for the rapid and reliable detection of viable pathogens, including viable but non-culturable cells, in drinking water and in water that comes in contact with food. Current techniques for monitoring microbial pathogens in water are time-consuming and/or unable to detect viable pathogens without interference from dead cells. Our research will develop better technologies, including new affinity probes for recognizing and capturing specific pathogens and new detection techniques that take advantage of the recent developments in nano-materials. We will develop a new selection technique to generate small synthetic DNA molecules (aptamers) that bind to various specific pathogens (e.g., E. coli O157:H7, E. coli O104:H4, Campylobacter jejuni, and C. coli). We will use the selected aptamer molecules as affinity probes to capture specific pathogens and detect them with unique fluorescent properties of nano-materials (e.g., gold nanoparticles and nanocrystals). We will further identify messenger RNA (mRNA) sequences as viability markers to discriminate viable from dead cells, because mRNA has a short lifetime and can be expressed only by viable cells. The major outcomes of this research will be new enabling technologies for the analysis of viable pathogens with an emphasis on on-site and point-of-care potential. The new analytical technologies will also be useful for other environmental, clinical, and health sciences research.