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| Image created by Dr. Michael J. Miller |
Researchers at the University at Albany have developed a test for salmonella contamination in food that can be done in a fraction of the time and cost of current methods.
Within a few years, it could potentially help avert some of the salmonella outbreaks that sicken more than a million Americans annually and kill hundreds.
The technique, from a team lead by chemistry professor Mehmet Yigit, uses paper that changes color to indicate the presence or absence of the salmonella bacteria. Getting to this point required a combination of work in chemistry, biology and nanotechnology — the latter for gene editing to make detection possible, said Yigit, who has been at UAlbany for a dozen years.
Changing steps in the gene-editing process likely will make the technology adaptable to detect other food-borne pathogens, and should have medical applications for treatment of disease as well, Yigit said.
“The beautiful part of it is that by simply changing one component in our test kit, we are able to program it for different pathogens,” said Yigit, who has worked on the technology for two years with a team that included Mahera Kachwala. She contributed to the research while completing her Ph.D. under Yigit’s supervision and was the lead author when the research was published as the cover story in the September issue of the scientific journal Advanced Healthcare Materials.
Yigit and colleagues chose to start with salmonella as their subject for several reasons — principal among them the frequency of outbreaks of salmonellosis, the illness caused by the salmonella bacteria.
Food becomes contaminated when it is exposed to the bacteria, usually in the feces of animals that carry it in their intestines with no ill effects. In humans, salmonellosis can cause fever, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting and stomach pain. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate there are 1.35 million salmonellosis cases annually. While most people recover after a few days of discomfort and don’t require treatment, the CDC says salmonellosis leads to an average of 26,500 hospitalizations and 420 deaths. Although norovirus affects more people every year, salmonella is the source of the most hospitalizations and deaths from food poisoning, according to the CDC.
“It really causes a lot of economic and public health issues,” said Yigit.
Another factor in choosing salmonella for their research, he said, is the nature of the bacteria.
He said, “It has a simpler genome” than other foodborne pathogens. “It was relatively easy to study in a chemistry lab.”
Yigit said everyday use of the new technology, likely starting on an industrial scale at huge farms and meat processing plants, is at least two years away. Once available commercially, he said he envisioned it could be part of weekly or even daily sanitation efforts to preemptively detect the presence of salmonella in food, rather than working backward to identify the source of an outbreak after many people have been sickened.
The team’s advances include getting results in hours instead of days; minimizing false-positive results; differenting between two common strains of salmonella, which is useful in tracking an outbreak and treating infections; and cost savings, Yigit said.
“By using tiny paper discs as the medium for detection, rather than a vial of reaction solution (in a lab), a much smaller amount of test solution is required to achieve a result,” he said in UAlbany’s announcement of his research. He said, “This makes our method about 20 times less expensive per test.”
Yigit and other researchers at UAlbany are engaged in what’s known as translational science, in which practical public use is the end goal of nifty discoveries. One professor is working to develop a laser that will help forensic technicians quickly analyze biological stains, gun residue and other matter at crime scenes, which also can be adapted to identify seafood fraud, for example; another is developing molecular tools to better understand and someday treat Alzheimer’s disease.
After Yigit’s technology is essentially finished, he said, he will seek funding for large-scale testing, continue the process of patenting the technology, and apply for grants to move the science from the lab for the marketplace. Those paths include researchers launching their own startup company to produce the test strips, or the Research Foundation for the State University of New York licensing the technology to an existing outside company.
While the new tests at first would be used in large industrial food operations, Yigit said he hopes they one day could be simple and inexpensive enough to be common in restaurants and later home kitchens.
He said, “Our ultimate goal is to make it portable enough so that … (it’s) similar to the COVID-19 rapid test.”