ESPRIT-UNILEVER: Ecophysics of Spore Preservation Resistance and Injury Typing

• Research unit: EU RFP
• Project number: 02.0401

Key words (English)

Biotechnology; Environmental Protection; Innovation; Technology Transfer; Life Sciences; Medicine; Health; Waste Management

Alternative project number (English)

EU project number: QLK3-CT-2001-60028

Research programs (English)

EU-programme: 5. Frame Research Programme - 4.1.2 System of Marie Curie fellowship

Short description (English)

See abstract

Abstract (English)

Bacterial spores from food poisoning and spoilage genera can be extremely resistant to heat and other preservation treatments. Sterilisation of foods is needed to inactivate spores, but leads to nutritional and organoleptic quality loss. Less detrimental superior (combination) preservation technologies are desirable, but these may process closer to the actual food safety boundaries for Clostridium botulinum and the processes may already exceed the spoilage boundaries. Tools need to be developed to determine presence of highly resistant spores in r aw materials and whether these spores can be sufficiently injured by mild processes and will not outgrow in the end products. Two fellows can work in parallel to develop preservation resistance typing and screening tools and injury assays.

These fellows can contribute to integrated quantitative preservation and the underpinning science to develop and compare mild preservation processes. One fellow can focus on the development of structural techniques (Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption Ionisation - Mass Spectrometry, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) to type preservation resistance of bacterial spores and measure injury. The other can focus on the ecophysiology of combination preservation resistance. Techniques will include automated combination preservation assessments and data handling in robotised systems, single cell techniques using flow cytometry and image analysis, chemostat cultures, possibly combined with functional genomics and Bioinformatics.

References in databases (English)

Swiss Database: Euro-DB of the
State Secretariat for Education and Research
Hallwylstrasse 4
CH-3003 Berne, Switzerland
Tel. [phone]
Swiss Project-Number: 02.0401