A GENETICALLY modified virus and a bacterium that lives in squid skin could be the next weapons against food-borne infections. The pair are being combined to form a rapid detection kit for E. coli 0157:H7.
The 0157 strain has caused numerous fatal outbreaks worldwide. Thorough cooking destroys it, but raw foods such as fruit and salads can pose a risk. Now Bruce Applegate鈥檚 team at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, has devised a detection system based on viruses called bacteriophages that only attack the 0157 strain.
They added a gene from the bacterium Vibrio fischeri, which is found in squid skin, to the phage. If any O157 bacteria are present, the phage will multiply and generate large quantities of the protein coded for by the Vibrio gene. This protein stimulates intact Vibrio bacteria to luminesce, so if the modified phage and Vibrio bacteria are sprayed on fruit, it will glow if there is any risk of infection.
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Applegate, who reported his results to an American Society for Microbiology meeting in New Orleans last week, is keen to point out that neither the phage nor the bacterium can infect people. 鈥淭he test is not going to hurt us at all,鈥� he says.