No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Water is our most important resource and the world’s supply is becoming alarmingly limited with rising concern about the high levels of microbial contamination. We are developing a novel strategy to assess human exposure to microbial contaminants in drinking and recreational water using a multiplexed, high-throughput immunoassay applying the Luminex xMAP platform. In this assay, antigens from waterborne pathogens are coupled to spectrally unique microspheres that are exposed to either pathogen-specific antibodies or human saliva. Our results indicate that multiplexed microsphere sets coated with antigens to Helicobacter pylori, Salmonella typhimurium, Escherichia coli O157:H7, Campylobacter jejuni, Toxoplasma gondii, Cryptosporidium parvum, and Giardia lamblia are able to capture both pathogen-specific antibodies and human salivary antibodies at the lowest-limit of detection of the assay. Additionally, we implemented a Design of Experiment (DoE) approach to evaluate the impact of antigen and antibody concentration on the detection level of H. pylori. From this work, we were able to generate a mathematical model describing the detection level as a function of critical process parameters to determine optimal conditions for protein coupling to Luminex beads. This immunoassay will allow for a sensitive, rapid, and cost-effective analysis of human exposure to waterborne pathogens with the potential to reduce the cost of epidemiological surveillance of waterborne infections.

No abstract