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Microbial contamination of food products by pathogenic bacteria is a major concern of our society. The current practice for preventing microbial contamination relies on rapid identification and effective control of specific pathogens in food products from farm to fork as well as in environmental and medical settings. Since current food processing and distribution systems operate at very high speed, it is extremely important to develop new, rapid methods for the detection of pathogens in food products, a critical step in ensuring the safety of our food supply.

In this study, an automatic immunoassay system was developed for rapid, specific, and sensitive detection of foodborne pathogens using E. coli O157:H7 as a model target. The system was interfaced to a PC and operated under Windows environment. The core of the system was to use an antibody-modified capillary column as a bio-separator to separate the target pathogen from the sample with other bacteria and/or concentrate the target pathogen, as well as a bio-reactor to host the immunological and enzymatic reactions. The results indicated that the proposed device with the absorptiometric mode could detect E. coli O157:H7 as low as 100 CFU/mL in 1 h with no negligible interference from E. coli K12, Salmonella Typhimurium, and Listeria monocytogenes.