Visualization of E. coli on food packaging

有一个迫切需要快速检测危险的食品微生物，可以导致衰弱的疾病和死亡，在加拿大和国外。具体来说，细菌病原体E.大肠杆菌O 157在多种食物中被发现时，包括绞细牛肉、绞细猪肉和加工蔬菜，都会导致年轻人和老年人发烧、呕吐和死亡。尽管精心加工和包装的食品E。大肠杆菌O157，如果存在的话，可以在这种环境中生存和茁壮成长，在进入市场的途中可能达到危险的水平。虽然E.大肠杆菌O157可以在实验室检测（例如PCR、细胞培养、ELISA），这些方法不能为潜在接触点（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）可用于检测E。大肠杆菌O157在非常及时和具体的方式在购买点。E.使用特异性抗体（Ab）的大肠杆菌O157可以与其他现有技术（即食品激光扫描仪）偶联，通过简单地将Ab与激光扫描仪可检测的荧光素或比色标记缀合。此外，大规模生产Abs并将其机械“打印”到包装材料表面的技术也很容易获得。因此，将这些现有的技术联合收割机组合成一种针对大肠杆菌的特异性生物传感器（即生物传感器）是唯一的真实的挑战。coli O157。因此，这里提出的建议旨在设计一个小型的，移动的生物传感器系统，可以检测大肠杆菌O157的存在时，纳入适当的食品包装材料。这种新型的病原体生物传感器技术将为消费者和食品工业提供重要的疾病预防策略。

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.