Who's Hitchhiking in Your Food?
How can you tell if harmful bacteria are growing in your food? Students learn to culture bacteria in order to examine ground meat and bagged salad samples, looking for common foodborne bacteria such as E. coli or salmonella. After 2-7 days of incubation, they observe and identify the resulting bacteria. Based on their first-hand experiences conducting this conventional biological culturing process, they consider its suitability in meeting society's need for ongoing detection of harmful bacteria in its food supply, leading them to see the need for bioengineering inventions for rapid response bio-detection systems.
How can you tell if harmful bacteria are growing in your food?Copyright (left) Pixabay https://pixabay.com/en/burger-fast-food-food-restaurant-1976187/ (right) 2006 David McClenaghan, CSIRO CC BY-SA 3.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CSIRO_ScienceImage_3567_Examining_an_agar_dish_for_bacterial_colonies_as_part_of_the_bioremediation_project.jpg
Engineers use the problem solving process to design new ways to meet human needs and challenges. Using conventional biological processes to detect harmful bacteria in food is slow, complicated and unreliable. Thus, a need exists for new advanced testing technologies to address the problem of pathogen detection in the medical, military, food and environmental industries. Bioengineers are finalizing the technology for portable, rapid, accurate detection of pathogens using handheld nano-scale biosensors that have the potential to save lives, reduce outbreaks and increase public confidence in the food supply.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Perform experiments on common food items such as ground meat, milk, vegetables or water to test for the presence of specific bacteria such as E. coli, including growing a culture of the bacteria.
- Evaluate the usefulness of the culturing process to meeting society's need for food screening.
- Explain why engineering new designs for rapid response bio-detection systems are desirable solutions to protect human health.