Cell Population Reduction of Salmonella typhimurium using Non-thermal Microwaves

Microwaves have been used to cause thermal destruction of various pathogens by heating the substrate they are found on. It has been found that microwaves also cause non-thermal destruction of bacterial cells thereby reducing the cellular population. The method to detect the non-thermal killing effects of microwaves is one of the highlight of the study undertaken. This has been an originally devised method (Barnabas et al, 2010) in our preceding work and has in this case been tested for the detection of non-thermal destructive effects on a specific pathogen. The study discusses the direct effect of microwaves on bacterial cells and the destruction quantification of the microwave exposure on cells, being laid out as a smear on slide than in a broth or solid media or food substrates. The impact of microwaves directly on cells at non-thermal levels proves that bacterial pathogenic cells can be destroyed at cellular levels without causing heating to substrates, this confronts the established science that microwaves could obliterate bacterial cells only by thermally heating the substrate. The quantification of cell population reduction in the smear slide were analyzed by growing the exposed smears slides in regular bacterial media and analyzing the surviving bacterial cell density in a spectrophotometer at 600nm.The study also exposed the other parameters such as the effect of varying incubation temperature after irradiation to analyze optimal incubation temperatures.