A Surface Plasmon Resonance Biosensor for Real-Time Immunologic Detection of Escherichia coli O157:H7

Abstract

Testing of foods for the presence of pathogenic organisms requires methods different than those employed in the clinical laboratory. In foods there could be very low levels of pathogenic bacteria and the organisms are often in a poor physiological state because of exposure to stressful conditions in the food environment or to stresses encountered during food processing and storage. The organism must be identified in the presence of a large population of competing flora. Therefore, a period of enrichment culturing of the sample in liquid growth medium is usually required in order to allow the organism to recover from injury and to allow for selective growth of low numbers of the target bacteria to detectable levels. Traditional methods for detection and identification of pathogenic bacteria in foods and other samples have relied on the use of specific microbiological media to isolate and enumerate viable bacterial cells followed by a series of biochemical and serological tests for confirmation.