Recipient Organization
PURDUE UNIVERSITY
(N/A)
WEST LAFAYETTE,IN 47907
Performing Department
Basic Medical Sciences
Non Technical Summary
This Propel spectral cell sorter will dramatically enhance the essential bioparticle analysis capabilities of the Center for Food Safety Engineering (CFSE) at Purdue University. The instruments will empower the CFSE scientists to pursue further their goals of developing and implementing innovative technologies aimed at protecting the nation from foodborne pathogen outbreaks. The integration of the Class II biocontainment allows us to use this new equipment for analysis, sorting, and purification of various pathogens in order to facilitate the design and development of novel detection, culturing, and testing procedures employed in the context of food safety research and food quality assessments. In addition, the instrument will offer a unique ability to analyze, and separate organisms form complex and poorly characterized mixtures, such as gut microbiome containing non-culturable species. The uncommon multi-spectral detection capability of the described system will let us leverage the recent progress in machine learning (ML), which explicitly addresses the problem of processing highly multidimensional phenotypic data. The use of ML methods will help us to characterize the complex communities of organisms statistically, enhancing the understanding of the interplay between the background bacterial flora, and the presence and emergence of dangerous foodborne pathogens. As the CFSEfaculty conducting studies in the critical food safety area, we are confident that access to a spectral biocontainment-enabled sorter will profoundly impact our present and future research
Animal Health Component
30%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
50%
Applied
30%
Developmental
20%
Knowledge Area
212 - Pathogens and Nematodes Affecting Plants;
314 - Toxic Chemicals, Poisonous Plants, Naturally Occurring Toxins, and Other Hazards Affecting Animals;
712 - Protect Food from Contamination by Pathogenic Microorganisms, Parasites, and Naturally Occurring Toxins;
903 - Communication, Education, and Information Delivery;
402 - Engineering Systems and Equipment;
Subject Of Investigation
1419 - Leguminous vegetables, general/other;
1099 - Tropical/subtropical fruit, general/other;
1430 - Greens and leafy vegetables;
0199 - Soil and land, general;
Field Of Science
1160 - Pathology;
1000 - Biochemistry and biophysics;
1080 - Genetics;
Goals / Objectives
The application is to fund a new pathogen cell sorter. We defined three key focused areas of cell-sorting application, plus one group of general FC use scenarios across the group of 21 faculty supporting this proposal and focused on some of these below: Rapid, safe sorting of pathogens directly onto a variety of testing/culturing environments (chambers, paper assays strips, multi-well plates, Petri dishes, and test tubes). This need is directly related to the design, development, and testing of pathogen detection and recognition systems. Use of sophisticated separation algorithms (spectral unmixing and machine learning) for high-purity separation of single organisms used in the downstream genomic analysis (PCR,16S-RNA,10X chips) Sorting viable but non-culturable organisms (including pathogens) from complex biomes in an attempt to identify the mixtures, composition, and organism interactions. Various cell sorting tasks requiring biocontainment: sorting cell lines contaminated with potentially dangerous organisms. These include sorting cells infected with viruses and performing spectral analysis for the separation of multiple sub-populations.
Project Methods
This is an instrument grant, so we will be installing the instrument afer purchase and then training staff and students in its operation. This will take a period of months. We will then develop SOPs, videos and training materials useful for all team members. These SOPs will be critical components of our process of utilization of the new generation of cell sorters.