Can Your Phone Tell You If Your Food Is Safe?

By Fenella Saunders

Determining whether your food is safe to eat could soon be as simple as activating an app and pointing your mobile phone at the meal on your plate.

October 10, 2015

From The Staff Biology Technology

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In the latest in our series of Google Hangouts with Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturers, Omowunmi Sadik discusses biosensors—what they are, how they work, and how they can help us determine whether our food contains unsafe levels of pathogens. Along the way, Dr. Sadik also talks about electrochemical "fingerprints," nanotechnology ethics, regulatory processes, and the patenting process, as well as her early years of studying science in Lagos, Nigeria.

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Dr. Sadik currently holds four U.S. patents for her work on biosensors. Among her numerous innovations, she has developed biosensors for ultrasensitive detection of Staphylococci enterotoxin B, biofilm, nucleic acids, pain biomarkers, oral proteins, Escherichia coli (E. coli), Bacillus globigii, chromium VI, polychlorinated biphenyls, environmental pollutants, and toxic metals.

In addition to her work in research, Dr. Sadik cofounded and currently serves as president of the Sustainable Nanotechnology Organization, an organization that promotes the responsible growth of nanotechnology globally through research, education, and outreach.

To hear more about Dr. Sadik's training and why she's motivated to find ways to use her innovations to help others, watch this video:

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To see Dr. Sadik at work in her lab and to learn more about her research on cancer-detecting biosensors, check out this video:

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And finally, to learn more about food-borne pathogens, read our article "Safer Salads," by Jorge M. Fonseca and Sadhana Ravishankar.

Figure 1. Outbreaks of illness caused by pathogens in produce have grown more frequent in recent years. Many factors contribute to this rise, and more than a dozen pathogens have caused outbreaks of food poisoning. The most common are intestinal microbes such as Salmonella and E. coli O157:H7, which are usually transmitted through the feces of livestock or humans. In the late 1990s, packaged sprouts were particularly vulnerable to contamination. This image shows Salmonella enterica labeled with green fluorescent protein and growing on two-day-old sprouts after experimental inoculation in the laboratory.

Image courtesy of Amy Charkowski, U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service.

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