IISc scientists develop sensor to detect e-coli bacterium

A group of scientists at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has successfully designed a sensor to detect the presence of harmful e-coli bacterium in food and drinking water. 

The sensor has been designed by the research teams of Dr Sai Siva Gorthi and Prof Sundarrajan Asokan of Department of Instrumentation and Applied Physics and Robert Bosch Centre for Cyber Physical Systems, IISc.

  The sensor is designed using a photo-sensitive optical fibre and is called a ‘bare Fiber Bragg grating (bFBG) sensor’, which is coated with antibodies specific to e-coli. When a beam of light comprising a band of wavelengths is passed through the bFBG sensor, it reflects one particular wavelength of light. When exposed to a sample in which e-coli cells are present, the e-coli cells bind specifically to the sensor.

Model to predict monsoon
Scientists at IISc have also proposed a new model to detect rainfall over localized land regions in real-time using satellite images.

Dr J Indu and Prof D Nagesh Kumar of Department of Civil Engineering, IISc, have developed the model from satellite microwave sensor data. Their work was recently published in the Hydrological Sciences Journal.

The team carried out their research in the Mahanadi basin area which is prone to large-scale flooding. Observations in such a diverse region can be used to improve the existing algorithms to detect rainfall, according to the researchers.