Gill Lab

Outbreaks of foodborne diseases carried by bacteria can be a nuisance at best, and deadly at worst. Researchers are looking into novel ways to keep food safe. One way to destroy these pathogens is with more pathogens.

Bacteriophages are viruses that specifically attack bacteria. These phages, as researchers call them, have evolved alongside bacteria and become very good at what they do.

Scientists are most interested in lytic phages – viruses that inject their DNA into a bacterium and then hijack the cell’s machinery to make new copies of the virus. The copies eventually burst through bacterium’s membrane, killing it, and attack neighboring cells.

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Phages are a hopeful alternative. “Phage therapy was the big thing in the [19]20s and 30s,” said Jason Gill, a microbiologist at Texas A&M University in College Station, who was not involved in the study.

Link: Food Safety Returns To Nature | Inside Science.

Biopreservation encompasses a number of food-preservation strategies, ranging from ancient methods such as fermentation to modern technologies including bacteriocins and bacteriophages.

In U.S. food industries today, biopreservation can be defined as the use of non-pathogenic microorganisms that antagonize or inhibit the growth of undesirable pathogenic and/or spoilage microbes through their metabolic activity or capacity to compete for nutrients or attachment niches, or the use of chemical compounds that have been fermented and then purified.

Our discussion here will be limited to biopreservation incorporating the use of microorganisms that inhibit, inactivate or antagonize other microorganisms.

Biopreservation methods can be used to enhance food safety by complementing other food-preservation processes, and due to their gentle nature can be used in situations where harsher treatments are undesirable, such as in fresh or minimally processed foods.

Link: Fighting microbes with microbes | 2014-03-05 | National Provisioner.

At the 2013 World Dairy Expo competition, the apple fell real close to the tree. The Grand Champion trophy went to a cloned cow named KHW Regiment Apple-3-Red-ETN, while second place went to her genetically identical source material, the original Apple-Red-ET.

The winner’s owner, a then-17-year-old named Tyler Faber, came from a singular genetic strain himself — his father was president of Trans Ova Genetics, a company in the business of cloning cows. The judges hadn’t known about the clonage, but later claimed it broke no rules (it may be that science progressed faster than the 4-H judging handbook).

Cloning Around: When Cow Copies Compete – Modern Farmer.

Link: Slate.com | Traditional Chinese medicine origins: Mao invented it but didn’t believe in it..

This report, Antibiotic resistance threats in the United States, 2013 gives a first-ever snapshot of the burden and threats posed by the antibiotic-resistant germs having the most impact on human health.

Each year in the United States, at least 2 million people become infected with bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics and at least 23,000 people die each year as a direct result of these infections. Many more people die from other conditions that were complicated by an antibiotic-resistant infection.

Antibiotic-resistant infections can happen anywhere. Data show that most happen in the general community; however, most deaths related to antibiotic resistance happen in healthcare settings such as hospitals and nursing homes.

Threat Report 2013 | Antimicrobial Resistance | CDC