A GENETICALLY modified virus and a bacterium that lives in squid skin could be the next weapons against food-borne infections. The pair are being combined to form a rapid detection kit for
The 0157 strain has caused numerous fatal outbreaks worldwide. Thorough cooking destroys it, but raw foods such as fruit and salads can pose a risk. Now Bruce Applegate's team at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, has devised a detection system based on viruses called bacteriophages that only attack the 0157 strain.
They added a gene from the bacterium
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