Food and Water Borne Fungal Pathogens

Water and Food are basic necessity of humans for their survival on the Earth. Food is any substance consumed by humans which provide nutrition and strength to the body and water is 70% of human body. Most of the food that we consume is either plants or their products. Besides plant, some lower organisms like aquatic or poultry animals are major source of food for us and water is important for all human activity. Any kind of contamination in food cause food-borne diseases in humans. Contamination may occur due to microorganism, improper handling of food, improperly cooked food or may occur in ready to eat food items. Water used in irrigation can also be a source of contamination of vegetables and fruits.

According to WHO, Unsafe food containing harmful bacteria, viruses, parasites or chemical substances, causes more than 200 diseases - ranging from diarrhoea to cancers. Diarrhoeal diseases are the most common illnesses resulting from the consumption of contaminated food, causing 550 million people to fall ill and 230000 deaths every year. Food-borne diseases is typically caused by toxins of microorganisms or through the bi-products of their metabolic pathways. Outbreaks of disease due to drinking water source contamination occur when a number of events happen simultaneously. There must be contamination of the source water, transport of the contaminant to the water intake or well of the drinking water system, insufficient treatment to reduce the level of contamination, and exposure to the contaminant. Exposure to waterborne and foodborne pathogens can occur via drinking water (associated with fecal contamination), seafood (due to natural microbial hazards, toxins, or wastewater disposal) or fresh produce (irrigated or processed with contaminated water). A number of diseases is caused by fungi. Microorganisms like fungi produce toxins when they are ingested and cause mild to severe disorders in the humans. The conventional methods to detect food borne pathogens include there culture in nutrient media followed by various biochemical tests.

These methods are more time consuming, less specific and more laborious. So there is a need to develop a method based on molecular technology which is more quick and highly specific. Current rapid detection methods includes ATP Bio-luminescence, Immunological detection, In-situ hybridization, bio-sensors, pyrosequencing, PCR based genotype etc.
The present work aims to develop a database of unique primers and probes of human fungal pathogen which aids in robust detection of these pathogens.The basic principle behind the database was to determine the unique strech of DNA sequence in fungal genome and to design a specific primer-pair along with a probe for each sequence. Such species specific primers and probes can be used in PCR for rapid amplification and detection of pathogen.
The database was developed using LAMP technology. PERL Scripts are used for the development of CGI interface. The backend was developed using MySQL 5. The Database of Fungal Pathogen (DOFunP). This database contains 20 food and water borne fungal pathogens which were responsible for causing various diseases in humans.