Capture of bacterial pathogens in liquid streams by multiple layers of phage based bio-molecular filter

Abstract

Foodborne illness is a common public health problem because food can be contaminated with pathogens at any point in the farm-to-table continuum. This paper presents a method of capturing a quantity of a specific bacterial pathogen in a large volume of liquid using a biomolecular recognition filter. The filter consists of support frames made of a soft magnetic material and solenoid coils for magnetization/demagnetization of the frames. This filter is a planar, multi-layered arrangement of strip-shaped, phage-immobilized magnetoelastic (ME) biosensors that are magnetically held and arrayed on the filter frames. As a large volume of liquid passes through the biomolecular filter, the pathogen of interest is captured by the phage immobilized ME biosensors. This biomolecular filter is designed to capture a specific pathogen and allow non-specific debris to pass, thus avoiding a common clogging issue in conventional bead filters. In this work, single layer, double layers and triple layers of filter were test to capture Salmonella Typhimurium in a large volume of water. The effects of multiplication of filter layers on Salmonella capture efficiency will be discussed.