Conventional methods to find sickness-causing microbes in food can take as long as 24 hours, but a hybrid nanosensor that incorporates magnetic resonance and fluorescence can sense varying concentrations of E. coli in less than an hour.
The usual common culprit for food recalls is a pathogenic strain of good old E. coli. To help prevent illnesses caused by this bacteria in food or water, researchers have developed a new nanosensor to rapidly detect its presence, according to a study that appears in the journal ACS Infectious Diseases, HellaWella reported.
Millions of illnesses and more than 1,000 deaths every year in the United States are attributable to food-borne illness caused by known pathogens, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Conventional methods to screen food to find sickness-causing microbes can take as long as 24 hours, which is often too slow to efficiently catch tainted products before they hit store shelves. Faster methods exist, but have limitations. Magnetic resonance, for example, can detect extremely low levels of bacteria, but loses its effectiveness at higher bacteria concentrations. Fluorescence is the opposite, HellaWella reported.
Tuhina Banerjee, Santimukul Santra and colleagues wanted to see if they could combine the two techniques to make a better detector. The researchers developed a hybrid nanosensor incorporating magnetic resonance and fluorescence, HellaWella reported.
Lab testing of milk showed the detector could sense varying concentrations of a pathogenic strain of E. coli known as O157:H7 in less than an hour. They also used their sensor to analyze E. coli levels in untreated lake water, which serves as a source of household water in some developing areas, HellaWella reported.
Additionally, the device could be customized to detect a wide range of pathogens beyond E. coli, HellaWella reported.
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