Development of a mobile sensor system, the BactiSense, for the onside detection of bacterial contaminations in water- and food samples.

Microbial contamination of food, feed, and water pose a persistent threat to human- and animal health. Usually, these infections are noticeable only in a later stage of the infection, resulting in the destruction of large batches of products. The precise identification of the underlying pathogen is time-consuming since cell culturing is always required, and often in combination with costly DNA profiling, which limits the use of these techniques for routine screening of food samples. In this study, the bacterium, E. coli is used as a model organism as the Flemish government defines strict limits for its concentration in food products, such as fruit juice (103 Colony Forming Units (CFU) mL-1), and livestock drinking water (105 CFU mL-1). Our research group has already developed an E. coli sensor, which is based on surface-imprinted polymer films as bacteria-selective receptor layers in combination with a thermal sensing technique. The goals of this project are i) a stringent simplification of the readout method towards planar sensor chips, ii) a significant lowering of the current detection limit of 104 CFU mL-1, and iii) the development of a concept that allows distinction between a larger number of different E. coli- and other bacterial strains. Samples under test will include buffer solutions, dairy products, fruit juice and beer.