Development of a novel reagent for release of biofilm-embedded microbes from surfaces for detection by monitoring techniques

Current methods for detection of microbial contaminants on surfaces use swabbing/wiping toextract microbes for analysis. This removes easily transferable microbes but fails to extractmicrobes living in biofilms which reduces sensitivity and may mask the true degree ofcontamination. The proposed project will develop BioXpose an innovative product for increasedextraction of microbes from biofilms for detecting contamination on food processing surfaces.Theproject will consist of three objectives.In objective 1 a set of thirteen enzymes in binary pairs willbe tested against in vitro biofilms of eight bacteria representing major food borne pathogens andmodel resident species of food industry surfaces. For Objective 2 multi-species (MS) in vitrobiofilms on plastic and stainless steel surfaces will be developed as more realistic representations ofactual contaminated food processing surfaces.The measure for assessing the quality of differentspecies combinations will be increased resistance to disinfectant treatment ensuring the final MSbiofilms will be more robust than single-species biofilms and a stronger challenge for enzymecocktails.In Objective 3 the top binary enzyme pairs will be tested against the two MS biofilmmodels and a set of 25 3-enzyme combinations will be tested using these systems.The finalenzyme combination will be tested using a commercial contamination assay to gauge theimprovement in performance.With the successful development of BioXpose food industry contamination monitoring systemsincluding BioXpose will achieve improved sensitivity accuracy and reliability which will providebetter protection from food-borne illnesses and reduce product recalls.