GENE IDENTIFICATION.(Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, NIX INc.)(Brief Article)

Process to Rapidly Extract Pathological E. coil 0-157 Gene

NIX Inc. has established a process to extract pathological E.coli in a very short time period, by using an electrically conductive hollow membrane. Normally, the process employed by medical treatment organs requires from one to three days for identification. The new process utilises the electric field effect enabling 0-157 extraction in about 25 minutes and just five hours for identification. At the same time, both the extraction and identification processes have been simplified.

In addition to the 0-157 gene, the system allows the identification of genes expressing the verotoxin, and the future plan is to apply the new technique to the identification of viruses.

In Japan, pathological E.coli -- 057 is primarily inspected by culturing and detecting the bacteria in patient excrement followed by a toxicity test. This process is lengthy, taking up to three days to complete. For that reason, the new method is attracting attention, as it carries out identification by extracting the verotoxin gene from 0-157.

In the NIX method, the 0-157 gene is separated from other bacteria by the immunity magnetic separation process utilising magnetic beads, the samples are prepared. Next, an electrically conductive hollow membrane, given a metal coating using an original inhouse non electric plating technique attracts the sample using a pump, capturing the gene inside the hollow membrane.

In this condition, the hollow membrane is immersed in an alkali solution to effuse the 0-157 bacterial membrane.

Subsequently, an electrophoresis tank, using the the hollow membrane as the cathode and a platinum electrode as the anode, and arranged with the cellophane membrane inside the phoresis domain, is prepared.