A new plastic film glows to flag food contaminated with dangerous pathogens

Carlos Filipe, a chemical engineer and colleagues at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, have developed a new a transparent, durable, and flexible sensing surface that generates a fluorescence signal, under UV light, in the presence of a specific target bacterium. Their first target was E. coli. The authors claim that the material is capable of monitoring microbial contamination in various types of food products in real time without having to remove the sample or the sensor from the package. They tested their sensor with contaminated apple juice and meat. the researchers report online April 6 in ACS Nano.@ https://www.sciencenews.org/article/new-plastic-film-glows-flag-food-contaminated-dangerous-microbes and https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.7b08010