Our Sensor

The goal of our project is to design a biosensor to rapidly identify cattle known as super shedders. Super shedders are cows that excrete extremely high counts of E.coliO157:H7, a bacterial strain of a group of E.coli referred to as Enterohaemorrhagic E.coli (EHEC). EHEC organisms produce a toxin called Shigatoxin or verotoxin, which causes hemolytic-uremic syndrome (HUS) in humans and can be deadly.

We are building a nucleotide biosensor that specifically detects a gene called stx2 that is common among all EHEC organisms. Therefore our device will be useful for the detection of not only the O157:H7 strain of E.coli but for the other EHC strains as well.

The FerriTALE System: