Taking on e-coli

Dr. Amilton de Mello, from the College of Agriculture, Biotechnology and Natural Resources at the University of Nevada, Reno, uses natural bacteria predators, called bacteriophages, to attack and reduce salmonella in meat by approximately 90%. However he is relentless and is pursuing another harmful bacteria… E. coli. "Our next project, we are going after bacteriophages for E. coli. We are going to be isolating our own bacteriophages. Further, we do have another project where we are going to try and feed beef cattle with these bacteriophages. But there are a lot of limitations because E. coli usually stays at the end of the intestines of the animal in a region called the colorectal junction. We do not really know if the bacteriophages will be able to reach that region. They will have to pass through the whole stomach and the intestines to get into that region where the E. coli is. We do have some previous data that shows that if we encapsulate the bacteriophages and protect the bacteriophages against the stomach juices, we can reach the area that we want, but I am anticipating a lot of pitfalls in this project. We are going to be relentless to improve beef and meat production in general in the United States.