A Novel Magneto-Fluorescent Biosensor for the Detection of Pathogens in Food

Abstract

Food safety has emerged as an important global issue. Illness from the pathogenic bacteria is a significant health concern. Pathogens are potentially harmful and it contaminate food and causes foodborne illness . It is very important for early detection of food borne pathogens. Conventional methods of detecting these pathogens eventhough sensitive, but still it is time consuming,complex and laborious. Biosensors have great potential for the detection of pathogenic bacteria in food. Biosensors are developed to rapidly detect the pathogens. In this paper, we use nanosized magnetite nanoparticles coated with chitosan, a polymer to capture and identify bacteria from contaminated food sample and eliminates the purpose of specific antibody coating. Amine group with magnetite nanoparticles (MNPs) specifically binds with the bacterial cell wall, on their surface of most pathogenic bacteria present in food. Rhodamine as a dye/marker which emits fluorescence in exposure to light used to detect the bacterial concentration in terms of light or fluorescent intensity and analog voltage using Magneto-Fluorescent biosensor. The developed biosensor could be able to detect bacteria in the limit of 10 CFU/ml and the time taken for measurement of a sample using biosensor would be less than 5 minutes.Hence the developed biosensor are non-specific and highly sensitive.