Engineering Bacteriophage For The Ultra Sensitive Detection of Food Borne and Animal Pathogens

My overall goal is to genetically engineer specific viruses that only infect bacteria (bacteriophages) to serve asbacterial recognition systems for improved food safety and animal health.Objectives:1. Insert reporter enzymes into bacteriophage genome2. Develop a CRISPR based selection mechanism to isolate mutant bacteriophages.3. Increase expression levels of reporter enzymes to decrease expression bacterial detection limits.4. Evaluate the effectiveness of other repoter enzymes.5. Evaluate the effectiveness of creating reporter enzyme fusion proteins.