Sprayable phage microgels cut E. coli O157:H7 on food by up to 6 logs (McMaster, Nature Communications)

McMaster University researchers (Lei Tian, Zeinab Hosseinidoust and colleagues) crosslinked half a million filamentous phages into each soft microgel, producing over 35,000 microgels per square centimetre of film template, a 13-billion-phage community. Loaded with virulent phages, the sprayable microgels reduced heavy loads of multidrug-resistant E. coli O157:H7 on food products by up to 6 logs in 9 hours, bringing contaminated lettuce below the detection limit. The work was published in Nature Communications on 5 December 2022.