Pragmatic Separation of E. Coli from Agricultural Water for Rapid Detection

The overall objective of this research proposal is to enable low-cost phage-based magnetic separation of bacteria from liquid samples by developing a pragmatic means to conjugate phage capsids to magnetic particles. Therefore, the aims of this project will include 1) engineering alkyne-functionalized T7 for conjugation onto azide-functionalized nanoparticles, allowing the magnetized phages to bind and separate E. coli from liquid samples, and 2) a validation study to determine the efficiency of E. coli capture from drinking and irrigation water. The inclusion of the luciferase gene will also allow rapid detection of the separatedE. coli using either dipsticks and a custom reader, or a plate reader available in the Nugen lab.[34-36]