Scientists led by an Indian-origin researcher have developed a faster method to detect harmful bacteria in food which can prevent illnesses such as food poisoning from Salmonella.
Researchers from Rice University in US said a new approach for pathogen screening is far faster than current commercial methods.
There is a need for better bacterial detection long before meats and produce make it to the dinner table, researchers noted.
While conventional methods to detect harmful bacteria in food are reliable and inexpensive, they can be complicated, time consuming and thus allow contamination to go undetected, according to Sibani Lisa Biswal and colleagues.
Biswal's team set out to develop a faster method to catch unwanted microbes before they can make people sick.
They used an array of tiny "nanomechanical cantilevers", anchored at one end, kind of like little diving boards. The cantilevers have peptides attached to them that bind to Salmonella.
Salmonella is one of the pathogens most commonly associated with foodborne illness, which can cause fever, diarrhea and abdominal cramps.
When the bacteria bind to the peptides, the cantilever arm bends, creating a signal.
The screening system rapidly distinguished Salmonella from other types of bacteria in a sample.
One of the peptides was even more specific than an antibody, which is considered the gold standard. That peptide could tell eight different types of Salmonella apart from each other, researchers said.
The technique could be applied to other common food pathogens, they said.
The study is published in Analytical Chemistry, a journal of the American Chemical Society.
