ID’ing microbes with lasers for safer food and water supplies

Micro Imaging Technology (MIT) is a California based company that has developed and patented a technology for rapid microbe identification. The MIT product and system (the MIT 1000) can identify different species of pathogenic bacteria like E. coli, Salmonella, Listeria and Staphylococcus, just minutes after culturing. The costs of testing are on average 20 times cheaper than current procedures, and can be accomplished in a fraction of the time. The potential is for more widespread testing, resulting in safer suppliers of food, pharmaceuticals and water. The cost advantage makes this particularly relevant to developing and under-developed nations.

The MIT 1000 device uses a laser and the principles of light scattering to discriminate various bacteria cells that are suspended in filtered water. Incident laser light both reflects off the bacteria’s outer surface and penetrates the body of the bacterium. The light interacts with any structural features and eventually emerges from inside the cell. These light patterns are unique for each bacterial species and thereby create a signature that is captured and stored in a computer data base.

The MIT 1000 features 35 photo detectors that surround the sample vial and collect light scattering intensities that are generated when a cell intersects the laser beam. The scattering values collected by the detectors are statistically analyzed by MIT’s proprietary software that contains an extensive database of values for each bacteria seen by the photo detectors. Identification occurs when 10-50 organisms are analyzed, and typically takes less than 10 minutes.

The MIT 1000 can be used in the following applications:

Food & Beverage
Food quality control
Source & process water quality control
Complement and eventually replace expensive lab testing
Pharmaceutical
Source & process water quality control
Defense
Periodic monitoring of water in remote or potentially hazardous environments
Water Utilities
Complement to regulated lab analysis when quick results are desired – can shorten confirmation time from 3 days to 8 hours
Semiconductor
Wafer fabrication process water
Hospitals
Cooling tower water and condensation
Clinical labs
Standard microbial ID testing

MIT is a development stage company, (OTCBB “MMTC”) that seeks to become a global leader in the detection and identification of microbrial organisms. The company has convened a noteworthy Science Advisory Board (SAB) that includes academic and industry leaders such as:

Ralph Emerson - BOD member & chairman of the SAB is a noted microbiologist who has held academic and research position at UC Irvine Medical and UC Davis

Kary Mullis – Nobel Prize Winning Chemist who invented PCR

Richard Walker - UC Davis Professor & Director of Animal & FoodSafety Lab

Edward Ackerman –Senior scientist at Pacific Northwest Labs.