12th International Symposium on Bioluminescence & Chemiluminescence

Symposium abstracts:

Bioluminescent assay of total bacterial contamination (TBC) in food samples and drinking water using Filtravette

Froundjian, Valeri G., Ugarova, Nataliya N.

Dept of Chemistry, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow 119899, Russia Email:vgf@enz.chem.msu.ru

Bioluminescent assay of TBC is rapid and sensitive method to assess hygiene quality of food and drinking water. Since the most of food samples contain excess of non-bacterial ATP and/or lower number of bacteria, special pretreatment of sample, laborious and time consuming, is required. To overcome this obstacle we used special lumonometric microcuvette, Filtravette^TM, that allowed one to remove free ATP, concentrate bacteria and measure light in the same cuvette. The combined use of Filtravette^TM and highly sensitive ATP-reagent developed in our laboratory permitted measure as low as 200 bacteria per FIltravette^TM. Raw milk (10³-10⁶ CFU/ml) and processed meat (10³-10⁵ CFU/g) samples were pretreated with mixture of detergent and pancreatin to destroy somatic cells and casein micelles or meat fibers. Drinking water (1-1000 CFU/ml) samples were preincubated in nutritive media to increase the bacteria number till measurable amount. A good correlation between Bioluminescent and Plate count methods was observed: R_s was 0.92, 0.99 and 0.98 for milk, meat and water samples respectively.

This is a preprint of an article accepted for publication in Luminescence: Copyright 2001 John
Wiley & Sons, Ltd (Wiley website)