Detection of bovine mastitis pathogens using novel nucleic acid testing technology

The objective of this study is the development of a rapid and cheap multiplexed assay to screen milk prior to processing. This will facilitate the identification of contaminated milk, infected herds and individual animals. The project is innovative in that it will apply novel chemical based nucleic acid detection technology to the identification of bacterial pathogens causing mastitis in dairy cattle. This will be achieved without the use of bacterial culture or PCR which are time consuming and expensive respectively. Our test will be run in under two hours without the use of nucleic acid processing enzymes. This feasibility study is based on customer desire for a superior assay to current practice. The resulting assay is expected to have immediates sales opportunities and will have global potential.