INCORPOARTING PRE-ENCAPSULATED BACTERIOPHAGE IN ELECTRSPUN FIBRES

摘要

Bacterial associated deaths from tainted packaged meats have increased the need for better food packaging and bacteria prevention.To address this we are investigating the incorporation of bacteriophage into nanofibrous materials.Electrospun nanofibrous mats are an idea medium for food packaging; they possess a large surface area,with good dimensional stability and are relatively easy to produce.However,previous work has shown that many bacteriophage are not resilient enough to survive electrospinning; organic solvents are toxic to phage and in aqueous medium the evaporation of water and dehydration of phage lead to complete loss of activity.To address this we have investigated emulsion electrospinning process wherein the phage is pre-encapsulated in an alginate reservoir and subsequently electrospun into fibres through emulsion electrospinning.The effect of processing conditions on fibre formation and phage activity is presented and discussed.