Visualization of E. coli on food packaging

在加拿大和国外，迫切需要快速检测可能导致衰弱疾病和死亡的危险食品微生物。具体地说，已知的细菌病原体O157在各种食物中被发现时，会导致发烧、呕吐和死亡，包括牛肉末、猪肉末和加工蔬菜。尽管对食品进行了仔细的加工和包装，但大肠杆菌O157如果存在，可以在这种环境中生存和繁衍，在进入市场的途中可能达到危险的水平。虽然O157大肠杆菌可以在实验室检测到(例如聚合酶链式反应、细胞培养、酶联免疫吸附试验)，但这些方法并不能为潜在接触点(即零售店)的消费者提供适当的保护。然而，现有的试剂(即单克隆抗体)可以在购买时非常及时和特异地检测到O157大肠杆菌。使用特定抗体(Abs)检测O157大肠杆菌可以与其他现有技术相结合，即食品激光扫描仪，只需将Abs与激光扫描仪可检测的荧光或比色标签结合起来即可。此外，批量生产Abs并将其机械地“打印”到包装材料表面的技术也很容易获得。因此，唯一真正剩下的挑战是将这些现有技术结合到针对E.ColiO157的特定生物传感器(即生物传感器)中。因此，这里提出的建议旨在设计一种小型移动生物传感器系统，当将其整合到适当的食品包装材料中时，可以检测到O157大肠杆菌的存在。这项新的病原体生物传感器技术将代表着消费者和食品行业预防疾病的重要战略。

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.