Analytical Development and Applications to Drinking Water Research

食物和水被病原体污染是一个主要的公共卫生问题。拟议的研究计划通过更好地对微生物和化学污染物进行分析检测和表征，有助于实现饮用水安全和健康保护的中心目标。我们的主要目标是开发创新的分析技术，以快速可靠地检测饮用水和接触食物的水中的活病原体，包括活的但不可培养的细胞。目前监测水中微生物病原体的技术是耗时的和/或无法在没有死亡细胞干扰的情况下检测到活的病原体。我们的研究将开发更好的技术，包括用于识别和捕获特定病原体的新亲和探针，以及利用纳米材料最新发展的新检测技术。我们将开发一种新的选择技术来产生与各种特定病原体(例如，大肠杆菌O157：H7、大肠杆菌O104：H4、空肠弯曲菌和大肠杆菌)结合的合成小DNA分子(适配子)。我们将使用选定的适体分子作为亲和探针来捕获特定的病原体，并利用纳米材料(例如，金纳米颗粒和纳米晶体)独特的荧光特性来检测它们。我们将进一步确定信使RNA(信使RNA)序列作为活性标记来区分活细胞和死亡细胞，因为信使RNA寿命短，只能在活细胞中表达。这项研究的主要成果将是用于分析可存活病原体的新的使能技术，重点是现场和护理点潜力。新的分析技术也将用于其他环境、临床和健康科学研究。

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.