Visualization of E. coli on food packaging

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There is an urgent need for rapidly detecting dangerous food microorganisms that can cause debilitating illness and death in Canada and abroad. Specifically, the bacterial pathogen E. coli O157 is known to cause fever, vomiting and death in both young and old when found as a contaminate in a variety of food stuffs, including ground beef, ground pork and processed vegetables. Despite careful processing and packaging of foods E. coli O157, if present, can survive and thrive in this environment, potentially reaching dangerous levels on route to market. Although E. coli O157 can be detected in laboratory (e.g. PCR, cell culturing, ELISA), these methods do not provide suitable protection for consumers at potential points of contact, namely the retail store. However, there are existing reagents (i.e. monoclonal antibodies) that could be used to detect E. coli O157 in a very timely and specific manner at the point of purchase. Detection of E. coli O157 using specific antibodies (Abs) can be coupled to other existing technologies, namely food laser scanners, by simply conjugating the Abs with flourescent or colorimetric tags that are detectable by laser scanners. In addition, the technologies to mass produce Abs and mechanically "print" them onto the surfaces of packaging materials are also readily available. So the only real remaining challenge is to combine these existing technologies into a specific biological sensor (i.e. biosensor) for E. coli O157. Therefore the proposal presented here aims to engineer a small, mobile biosensor system that can detect the presence of E coli O157 when incorporated into appropriate food packaging materials. This novel pathogen biosensor technology would represent an important disease preventative strategy for both consumers and the food industry alike.