FOODBORNE VIRUS DETECTION
Foodborne virus detection…
Foodborne viruses like norovirus and hepatitis A need early detection. According to the University of Massachusetts Amherst food scientists and virologists, it is more like finding a needle in a haystack. Hence the intent is to develop techniques to streamline foodborne virus detection. Food scientists are on a quest to devise more effective and efficient methods to identify food viruses. It must be detected in time to prevent these viruses from causing gastroenteritis outbreaks. Thus, providing the opportunity to respond quickly.
Traditional detection methods are labourious. Thus, it is time-consuming and labour-intensive to separate the virus from the contaminated sample. Furthermore, separating concentration into smaller volumes to improve the likelihood of obtaining detectable levels of the virus is difficult.
Viral contamination
Often, viral contamination of foods and the environment occurs at low levels. However, consumption of these contaminated foods can still make consumers ill. It is because only a minute number of viruses are required to cause sickness. This low level of viruses creates the needle-in-the-haystack challenges. Thus far, lacking an efficient method to concentrate a small number of viruses from a large, complex food sample creates issues for the viruses to be readily detected.
To combat these challenges the University has received a USD$650,000 grant. It is granted by the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) Agricultural and Food Research Initiative (AFRI). The objective is to develop and investigate magnetic liquids for concentrating and detecting foodborne noroviruses and hepatitis A.
Collaboration
University of Massachusetts Amherst in collaboration with Iowa State University will investigate two types of magnetic liquids. These are magnetic ionic liquids (MILs) and deep eutectic solvents (DESs). They will look at concentrating noroviruses which is the leading cause of foodborne illnesses and hepatitis A virus from food and environmental samples.
So far, both MILs and DESs have shown promise for the concentration and detection of other pathogen and contamination targets. These targets are like bacteria, however, work on viruses is still limited. Thus far, this project builds on research at the University by doctoral students. The leading doctoral student has received a NIFA fellowship doing foundational work with MILs.
Research findings
The research so far suggests that MILs may be promising reagents for the concentration and detection of closely related surrogate viruses to human noroviruses. In addition to extracting their viral genomes for amplification-based detection. Furthermore, this project builds on additional promising data that a created by a then-undergraduate UMass Amherst researcher. This work shows similar promise for DESs.
The research team aims to combine the steps to streamline the viral detection process. Thus, better preventing foodborne sickness and improving the public health responses. So, given their potential to concentrate a wide range of foodborne pathogens and contaminants from foods they have the potential to devise a valuable one-stop reagent for upstream processing of samples. It is portable, quick, and single-tube manner that may help to maintain the safety of food supplies. In addition to this, it has the potential to capture nucleic acids, and magnetic liquids.
