ABSTRACT
Microbial screening is a primary concern for many products. Traditional techniques based on standard plate count (SPC) are accurate, but time consuming. Furthermore, they require a laboratory environment and qualified personnel. The impedance technique (IT) looking for changes in the electrical characteristics of the sample under test (SUT) induced by bacterial metabolism represents an interesting alternative to SPC since it is faster (3-12h vs. 24-72 h for SPC) and can be easily implemented in automatic form. With this approach, the essential parameter is the time for bacteria concentration to reach a critical threshold value (about 10(7) cfu mL(-1)) capable of inducing significant variations in the SUT impedance, measured by applying a 100 mV peak-to-peak 200 Hz sinusoidal test signal at time intervals of 5 min. The results of this work show good correlation between data obtained with the SPC approach and with impedance measurements lasting only 3h, in the case of highly contaminated samples (10(6) cfu mL(-1)). Furthermore, this work introduces a portable system for impedance measurements composed of an incubation chamber containing the SUT, a thermoregulation board to control the target temperature and an impedance measurement board. The mix of cheap electronics and fast detection time provides a useful tool for microbial screening in industrial and commercial environments.
Subject(s)
Bacterial Load/instrumentation , Biosensing Techniques/instrumentation , Bioengineering , Electric Impedance , Equipment Design , TemperatureABSTRACT
The detection of microbial concentration, essential for safe and high quality food products, is traditionally made with the plate count technique, that is reliable, but also slow and not easily realized in the automatic form, as required for direct use in industrial machines. To this purpose, the method based on impedance measurements represents an attractive alternative since it can produce results in about 10h, instead of the 24-48h needed by standard plate counts and can be easily realized in automatic form. In this paper such a method has been experimentally studied in the case of ice-cream products. In particular, all main ice-cream compositions of real interest have been considered and no nutrient media has been used to dilute the samples. A measurement set-up has been realized using benchtop instruments for impedance measurements on samples whose bacteria concentration was independently measured by means of standard plate counts. The obtained results clearly indicate that impedance measurement represents a feasible and reliable technique to detect total microbial concentration in ice-cream, suitable to be implemented as an embedded system for industrial machines.
Subject(s)
Biosensing Techniques/instrumentation , Colony Count, Microbial/instrumentation , Food Analysis/instrumentation , Food Contamination/analysis , Food Microbiology , Ice Cream/analysis , Ice Cream/microbiology , Biosensing Techniques/methods , Colony Count, Microbial/methods , Electric Impedance , Electrochemistry/instrumentation , Electrochemistry/methods , Equipment Design , Equipment Failure Analysis , Food Analysis/methodsABSTRACT
This paper presents a new electronic methodology to detect DNA hybridization for rapid identification of diseases, as well as food and environmental monitoring on a genetic base. The proposed solution exploits a new (electrical) capacitive measurement circuit, not requiring any prior labeling of the DNA (as it is often the case with the commonly employed optical detection). The sensitivity, the reliability, and the reproducibility of this device have been evaluated by experiments performed with a (non-integrated) prototype implementation, easily integrable in IC and/or micro-fabricated lab-on-a-chip.
