Life Technologies has developed a custom test (assay) to accurately detect the E coli bacterium that has killed at least 22 people and affected more than 2,100 worldwide.
Shipments of the Taqman E 0104 Detection Kit to test foods thought to be associated with the outbreak are now in Europe.
Life Technologies began designing the specially tailored test last week after company researchers, using samples supplied by scientists at University Hospital Munster, completed the DNA sequencing and analysis work on the deadly E coli strain using the Ion Personal Genome Machine (PGM).
Results from their work, and independently supported by a second team of researchers in China also using the PGM, showed that the E coli bacterium is a hybrid strain that is resistant to antibiotics.
It took both teams just three days to complete the work on the benchtop DNA sequencer.
