'Sugar-glass' film uses viruses to kill harmful bacteria in food

Researchers at the McMaster University in Canada embedded phages into soluble "sugar glasses" or films made with pullulan, a polysaccharide used to prolong the shelf life of fruits and eggs; trehalose, a sugar used as stabilizing agent in freeze drying; or a combination of two substances.
They found that the phages embedded within the combined pullulan-trehalose mixture could still infect bacteria such as Lysteria monocytogenes up to three months later. The coating could someday be used in the food packaging and processing industries. An article about the research is published in ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering (News Release ScienceDaily, 8 November 2017).
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Click here for the an abstract of the published article.
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