Banishing biofilms: loosening their grip could make food supply safer
If you could see a piece of celery that鈥檚 been magnified 10,000 times, you鈥檇 know what the scientists fighting foodborne pathogens are up against, said University of Illinois microbiologist Hans Blaschek.
鈥淚t鈥檚 like looking at a moonscape, full of craters and crevices. And many of the pathogens that cause foodborne illness, such as Shigella, E. coli, and Listeria, make sticky, sugary biofilms that get down in these crevices, stick like glue, and hang on like crazy.
鈥淪cientists and people in the food industry are intensely interested in how these biofilms form and behave. Understanding how they work could lead to targeted approaches for their prevention and removal,鈥� he said.
The sales figures for his new book Biofilms in the Food Environment certainly support that sense of urgency. Blaschek says the book contains the accumulated wisdom of academics who study biofilms and industry food scientists who battle them on the front lines daily.
According to Blaschek, the problem faced by produce suppliers can be a triple whammy. 鈥淚f you鈥檙e unlucky enough to be dealing with a pathogen--and the pathogen has the additional attribute of being able to form biofilms鈥攁nd you鈥檙e dealing with a food product that鈥檚 minimally processed, well, you鈥檙e triply unlucky,鈥� the scientist said.
鈥淵ou may be able to scrub the organism off the surface, but the cells in these biofilms are very good at aligning themselves in the subsurface areas of produce.
鈥淥ver time, the sticky cells of the biofilm form on top of each other, creating a microenvironment that behaves more like a multicelled organism. And all these little bacterial cells communicate with each other. They鈥檙e fascinating really; unfortunately, they can also be deadly,鈥� he said.
Blaschek says the biofilms book has generated a lot of interest from the food industry. 鈥淚t鈥檚 really a comprehensive reference source for industry scientists, university researchers, and regulatory agencies. In particular, food engineers who design strategies and cleaning procedures for produce need to understand how biofilms form and behave so they can develop better protocols for removing them,鈥� he said.
鈥淭here鈥檚 an interesting discussion of the correlation between a strain鈥檚 virulence and its biofilm-forming abilities, information about cutting-edge technologies to investigate microbial compositions in biofilm ecosystems and cell-to-cell interaction, and updated findings on the molecular attributes and mechanisms involved in biofilm development,鈥� he said.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a very applied kind of approach, connecting the research that鈥檚 being done in labs across the country with the needs of food technologists,鈥� he added.
Source: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
