Title : A phage filter for the identification and quantification of pathogens in large volumes of liquids
Abstract:
I n the United States approximately 48 million illnesses occur each year due to foodborne pathogens. On average, the American citizen will become ill 12.8 times during their lifetime and endure 50 days of sickness due to foodborne illness [1, 2]. The medical costs, recall costs and productivity losses due to foodborne illness are more than $15.6 billion per year [3]. Large volumes of food must be evaluated for the presence of pathogens that cause illness. The current technique of analyzing only a few ml of food samples from thousands of green spinach leaves, fruits or other vegetables is woefully inadequate to insure the safety of our food supply. In this paper, a clog resistant, biomolecular, phage filter has been developed to capture, concentrate and isolate small numbers of target pathogens from large volumes of liquid. The phage filter consists of a magnetized filter frame and thousands of phage-coated filter elements made of a magnetoelastic material [4, 5]. Pairs of magnets were used to generate a uniform magnetic field to align and hold filter elements on the frame. Filter elements, held by the magnetic field, are free to rotate, allowing passage of large debris. The strip-like filter elements were made of Metglas 2826MB ribbon with phage specific to target pathogens immobilized on the surface. A prototype filter with high density of filter elements in the size of 2″ x 2has been demonstrated. Figure 1 is a photo of one layer of the non-clogging filter. Measured Capture Efficiency (Salmonella filter) is shown in Figure 2.
