SOUTH EASTON, Mass., July 16, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Food contamination continues to dominate the headlines. Whether it's a widespread pistachio recall, dangerous ground beef products, or cookie dough contaminations, these shocking incidents have sent federal microbiologists out into the field to perform the detective work necessary to uncover the sources of disease-causing strains of food-borne bacteria.
"The key here is the phrase 'detective work,'" says leading expert in high pressure bioscience and biotechnology, Dr. Edmund Ting, Senior VP of South Easton, MA-based Pressure BioSciences, Inc., (Nasdaq:PBIO) who has spent years researching the effects of high hydrostatic pressure on pathogens that contaminate the food supply, such as E. coli, Listeria, and Salmonella. Dr. Ting believes that improvements in food safety depend on the rapid and accurate detection of food-borne pathogens, both in pre-release quality control testing and in post-outbreak investigations. Such detection depends to a great extent on the quality of the extraction of the DNA, RNA, and proteins ("biomolecules") from the pathogens contaminating the food.
"Current extraction methods rely principally on heat, electrical charge, sonication, homogenation, bead beating, and chemical partitioning, all of which can alter and sometimes even destroy sensitive, important biomolecules (such as proteins), or fail to liberate them from complex biological structures," explains Dr. Ting. "Consequently, it may be difficult to find the contaminating pathogen if the sample preparation method cannot reproducibly and effectively extract the pathogen's biomolecules from the food sample prior to testing."
New sample preparation technologies continue to be developed, enabling scientists to extract biomolecules related to food-borne and other pathogens more quickly, accurately, and efficiently than ever before. One example cited by Dr. Ting, pressure cycling technology (PCT), employs cycles of hydrostatic pressure between ambient and ultra-high levels (up to 35,000 psi and greater) to safely, reproducibly, and efficiently release DNA, RNA, and proteins from food, plant, and biological samples within minutes, allowing for more rapid and accurate downstream testing.
At present, PCT technology is being used by approximately seventy-five laboratories around the world, mostly in the areas of biomarker discovery (to detect markers for cancer, stroke, neurological disease, etc.), soil and plant biology (to detect pathogens harmful to food crops, such as wheat and strawberries), forensics (mostly in the detection of DNA), human disease (to detect microbes that live on or in the human body), and counter-bioterror applications. Currently, several USDA laboratories are employing the technology, as is at least one laboratory of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Dr.
