In the news

Oasis won the Grand prize among some 60 applications submitted to the fourth annual Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Water Innovation Prize competition for its simple, inexpensive test for detecting E. coli. The test uses the development of color in a liquid media to determine if and how contaminated the water is. The assay showed 98% specificity when compared to the standard filtration method, with a limit of detection of 1 colony/100 ml of water. The self-contained disposable retails for $2.99. “The kit includes two plastic bags (one large and one small), that are pre-loaded with a specialized E. coli powdered media. Users fill the tube (large volume) and its cap (small volume) with drinking water and then pour the water in the respective bags. The bags turn orange when dissolved in the water sample,” Explains Bir Oasis founder. “Results are interpreted by the color of the bags after 48 hours if they are kept at ambient temperature, or 24 hours if incubated at 37 degrees Celsius,” Bir notes. “We’ve given it to children in India, where there’s no access to education, and, just by following the instructions, they’ve been able to perform the test.”
@ https://www.foodqualityandsafety.com/article/color-test-for-e-coli-captures-coveted-grand-prize/?elq_mid=27845&elq_cid=10195538
More information can be found @ https://www.oasiswatertest.com/

Food safety attorney Bill Marler said the outbreak of E. coli in lettuce points to a failure in systems that were put in place to protect the public in the wake of a similar deadly spinach outbreak in 2006. Marler believes the outbreak reflects a broader problem, which seems to affect the entire Yuma growing region, despite controls that were enacted in the last decade. “We are basically having the exact same outbreak that we had in 2006,” Marler told IEG Policy on June 1. “The size is identical. Then it was 203 [cases] with three deaths, now we have 197 with five deaths. So, I would make a pretty strong argument that the Leafy Green Marketing Agreement (LGMA) and the FSMA rule have been a failure. And the failure is not taking into account the environmental causes of E.coli. And it is exactly what we’ve got here.” Marler believes that FDA needs to increase transparency and abandoning the practice of protecting the names of companies implicated in recalls and outbreaks. @ https://iegpolicy.agribusinessintelligence.informa.com/PL216600/Marler-says-Ecoli-outbreak-points-to-systems-failure-in-LGMA-FSMA?vid=Agri

Even though extensive cleaning procedures in clean rooms and spacecraft are utilized, molecular genetics analyses show that the clean rooms harbor a diverse collection of microorganisms or a spacecraft microbiome. The Acinetobacter, a genus of bacteria, are among the dominant members of the spacecraft microbiome. In this research, the investigators showed that under ultraminimal conditions several spacecraft-associated Acinetobacter metabolize or biodegrade the spacecraft cleaning reagents of ethanol (ethyl alcohol), 2-propanol (isopropyl alcohol), and Kleenol 30 (floor detergent). The work showed that cultures grew on ethyl alcohol as a sole carbon source while displaying reasonable tolerances towards oxidative stress. This study provides a plausible biochemical explanation to the observed microbial ecology dynamics of spacecraft-associated environments. @ https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/ast.2017.1814
More information: Rakesh Mogul et al. Metabolism and Biodegradation of Spacecraft Cleaning Reagents by Strains of Spacecraft-Associated Acinetobacter, Astrobiology (2018). DOI: 10.1089/ast.2017.1814

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