Team:Nottingham/Human Practices

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Human
Practices

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Human Practices Outreach

Human

Practices

Follow our human practices journey to see how advice from academics and industry professionals led us to improve our project.

Where to begin?

The Notox project aims to revolutionise the way in which the safety of our food is maintained. To ensure that we have a positive impact on society in a responsible manner, our Human Practices work involved heavy interaction with numerous stakeholders within the food industry. This ranged from food manufacturers, to food testers and academics with expertise in foodborne diseases. In addition to this, we developed a device that could be industrially viable outside of the lab, which presented us with challenges that required us to consult with electronic engineers as well. Creating a dialogue with our stakeholders was achieved in various ways, such as factory tours, interviews and even an informal coffee break!

We have illustrated the integral points of our Human Practices work in the form of a flow chart, demonstrating the influence that relevant stakeholders had on the direction of Project Notox. For more detail on how we went about it, click the tabs below:

Overview

Industry

Academics

Group Discussion

Public Survey

Our Project

Pro-Pak

Campden BRI

Prof. Mike Peck PhD

Prof. Liz Sockett FRS

Rapid Electronics

EEE Department

Dr Christian Klumpner

Public Survey

As part of our human practices research, we distributed a survey to the public. Discussion on our aims, results and analyses can be found here.

Potential Impact of our Project’s Success

We have created a food safety technology with the potential for significantly reduced time-cost, monetary-cost and reliance on animal testing. As of 2019, the current industry standard of 'challenge testing' is prohibitively expensive for smaller companies and businesses. Our methods will be more accessible to the industry as a whole, as it has the potential to drive down the costs associated with challenge testing. A quicker method of detection allows a higher volume of experiments to be run at once, ensuring food safety for the general public across a broader range of food products.

Website

www.pro-pakfoods.co.uk

Files:

Pro-Pak Foods, Report

Pro-Pak Foods Interview with David Raine, Video Recording

Pro-Pak Foods, Interview Transcript

Gallery:

Website

www.campdenbri.co.uk

Files:

Dr Greg Jones, Campden BRI Report

Pro-Pak

Pro Pak foods are a ready meals manufacturer and a part of the Tönnies Group, a multi-national food business. Pro-Pak supply ready meals to British retailers such as ASDA and Spar. Their products range from retailer-branded meals, Quorn™, and Ella’s Kitchen baby food to name a few. The technical director, David Raine, gave us a tour of their facility and kindly agreed to answer some Human Practices questions for us in the form of an interview.

Our visit to Pro-Pak allowed us to view the food production and packaging process and the methods used in order to sterilise food. We learnt about the retort; a device that uses steam and pressure to sterilise food. The retort kills all bacteria present in the food before it is packaged. Most companies rely on this device to ensure food is safe to eat, therefore do not use other contingency measures such as challenge testing.

Challenge testing involves deliberate inoculation of a food product with a specific bacteria to see how it behaves. The data can determine expiry dates and whether the food preservation or packaging method is effective.

Pro-Pak’s main reason for not challenge testing was the high cost of the test. Instead, they use a retort which sterilises the food at a high temperature using steam and pressure.

We wanted to make our testing device as effective as challenge testing but cheaper and safer allowing it to be more accessible to companies like Pro-Pak who do not have the testing facilities to work with class III organisms, but would still benefit from challenge testing in order to determine the most effective packaging and preservation methods they could use in order to extend their shelf life.

Campden BRI

After visiting Pro-Pak Foods, we decided that it would be better to target food testing companies rather than food manufacturing companies as our device is more likely to be used in this kind of setting. When talking to David Raine, the technical director of Pro-Pak foods, we were introduced to challenge testing and felt that our device could provide a cheaper alternative to it. Challenge testing is primarily carried out by food testing companies, and we came across one such company known as Campden BRI. We reached out to them about our project and were put into contact with Dr Greg Jones, a microbiologist at Campden who has expertise on challenge testing. He provided us with more information about the process and gave constructive feedback on our project as well. A few points which came up in our telephone conference were:

Issue	Integration
It would be beneficial to quantify the amount of toxin produced giving our project an industry advantage	Our electronic nose gave a binary classification: either acetone was detected, or it wasn’t. As quantitative data is preferred, we engineered our nose to record exact concentrations of acetone instead.
Clostridium estertheticum could be a better surrogate for the mesophilic botulinum types that are associated with food botulism.	Our idea is a proof of concept for botulinum type I; as such, we are testing it in Clostridium sporogenes and will then create a C. botulinum no-toxin strain that gives off a reporter. We would then apply our reporter system to other strains of botulinum. In the future we can apply this to other foodbourne pathogens such as Listeria.

Rapid Electronics

Rapid is “one of the UK's leading distributors of electronic components, cables and connectors, electrical products, tools and educational resources”. Not only have they provided our team with electronic components, but their advice has also proven to be extremely helpful with the construction of our device.

Issue	Integration
We knew what the application for our device should be, however, we were unsure of which components were required and how to build the electronic nose.	They advised us when creating a shopping list, which was later revised by Dr Klumpner, then provided us with all the components that were required.
We didn’t have workspace to build the electronic nose in nor the expertise to do so.	They have put us in touch with the University of Nottingham’s EEE technician, Edward Kujawinski, who has provided us with the help and workspace we required.

Files:

Mike Peck, Report

Mike Peck Interview, Audio Recording

Gallery:

Mike Peck

Professor Mike Peck is a consultant microbiologist from the Quadram Institute. His research interests are primarily centred around Clostridium botulinum, and his contributions to botulism research have resulted in social and economic impacts within the food industry! Prof. Peck visited the University of Nottingham and gave a seminar titled “Clostridium botulinum and food-borne botulism”. This was the perfect opportunity to gain professional advice on our project, so we created a PowerPoint presentation about it, followed by a Q&A session. Some of the most useful pointers he gave us were:

Issue	Integration
In order to measure the presence of acetone in an industrial setting, we need sufficient headspace in VP/MAP foods.	Once our acetone reporter method becomes more widely adopted, we would advise VP/MAP food manufacturers to allow for sufficient headspace int their packaging.
It was suggested that a fluorescent reporter may be more useful in an academic setting.	We decided to use the fluorescent FAST reporter for academic research. The acetone reporter for industrial uses, and GusA as a back-up for the acetone.
There was a botulinum outbreak in carrot juice, therefore, it is a good media to support botulinum growth.	Clostridium sporogenes growth curve have been done in carrot juice and our mutant has been tested in this media.

Liz Socket

Professor Liz Sockett is a microbiologist at the University of Nottingham who recently became a fellow of the Royal Society. She invited the iGEM team for a coffee break, over which we discussed our project. She suggested that we create an acetone kill curve for Clostridium sporogenes to see how much acetone it can withstand.

Issue	Integration
Carrot juice is too turbid to measure optical density (OD) using the plate reader.	Instead of OD, we will measure viable cell count using the colony-forming unit (CFU) assay procedure.
Acetone may kill Clostridium sporogenes. This would result in inaccurate toxin production data.	We performed an acetone kill curve assay to determine how much acetone is lethal to Clostridium sporogenes .

Christian Klumpner

Dr Christian Klumpner is an Associate Professor in Power Electronics at the University of Nottingham, Faculty of Engineering. His area of expertise is in power electronics and AC drives, direct power conversion (matrix converters), integrated motor-converter drives, grid-friendly power converters for connecting renewable resources (fuel cells, photovoltaic). He has published over 100 papers, 37 as first author, and over 20 papers in international journals with peer review; 13 as first author.

Dr Klumpner was our main contact in the electronic engineering field. He provided us with advice on all aspects of the electronic nose design throughout the duration of our project. Here are some of the main points he has addressed:

Issue	Integration
We need appropriate software to make our device work. Dr Klumpner suggested the Arduino IDE as software to write our device code on..	We used the software Dr Klumpner suggested. He has also taught us the basics of the programme and suggested us websites that we can use for future reference and study.
We need components which can make our device work as we intend it to	He has helped us in creating the list of appropriate components to be ordered from Rapid Electronics.
The volatile acetone’s detection sensor reading is highly affected by temperature and humidity	The sensor must be kept in an enclosed space. The use of the syringe with a designated room for the sensor has been suggested to obtain more accurate readings
It would be more beneficial for our device to be handheld	He has suggested us to use Lithium-Ion battery to power the device instead of having it constantly plugged into a computer or a socket as we have initially planned it

Edward Kujawinski

Edward Kujawinski is an Electronic Engineering technician at the University of Nottingham, Faculty of engineering. He has provided us with technical help throughout the project. Without his guidance, we would not be able to build the electronic nose. Here are the main ways in which he has impacted our project:

Issue	Integration
Our device is too heavy to be handheld	Veroboards were suggested to us for component soldering because they are lighter and more compact hence making it easier to be handheld.
We want the user to be able to know the exact concentration read by the sensor, instead of only having an LED signalling the presence of acetone.	The use of an LCD alongside an LED has been suggested, so that the user can read the concentration on the display via the LCD and be additionally informed if the concentration is higher than it should be via the LED signal
We need to make circuit plans in order to better understand our connections and how to update them	We have searched for potential circuit planning software and chose Fritzing to create our electronic circuits schematics
We need to put the hardware inside a casing	We planned together how the hardware was going inside the casing, as well as how we were to solder it together
The casing won’t fit all the components	He has suggested the necessary changes, such as making the battery box bigger, needed to be made in the outer casing design, making everything fit and work

Alex Ottway

Alex Ottaway is an Electronic Engineering technician at the University of Nottingham Faculty of engineering. He was our main contact with the 3D printing of the device. Here are some ways in which he has impacted our project:

Issue	Integration
Our device was too big to be printed out	We redesigned the product and divided it into smaller parts so that everything can be printed out and assembled after printing

iGEM Nottingham 2019