Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

The goal of the proposed research is to develop a microfluidics and biosensor-based platform for precise and highly sensitive detection of pathogenic bacteria in food samples. Contamination of food with pathogenic bacteria leads to serious illness in humans resulting in hospitalization and deaths. For instance, Listeria in ready-to-eat meats, E. coli in raw ground beef, and Salmonella in chicken have lead to several outbreaks in Canada and other countries. Early detection and measures to prevent the spread of pathogens in food products would not only help reduce economic losses from such incidences but also tremendously benefit public health. Currently available techniques for detecting pathogens in food have limited capability as they require long processing time and skilled users. Therefore a major technology challenge is to develop new detection devices which are fast and simple to use. We propose to develop an antimicrobial peptide-based Biological Micro Electro Mechanical System (Bio-MEMS) sensor for rapid quantification of pathogenic bacteria in food in real-time. In this context, a Bio-MEMS cantilever sensor surface will be modified through surface conjugation using three antimicrobial peptides specific for Listeria monocytogenes, E. coli O157:H7, and Salmonella, enhancing the sensitivity of cantilever sensor. This technology is not currently available for detection of bacteria in processed food products such as ready-to-eat meats. The BioMEMS sensor platform put together with integrated microfluidics will be fast, efficient, sensitive, cost-effective and portable and may also be easily modified to detect other pathogens in different samples such as water and pharmaceutical products. Overall, development of BioMEMS sensor for pathogenic bacteria monitoring will be a key step forward in manufacturing a bio-inspired micro/nanotechnology based system and will put Canada in the forefront of food borne pathogen detection.