These fuzzy little folks can cause severe disease.

Botulism is a pretty nasty disease, caused by toxins generated by the Clostridium botulinum microbe.  Of course the food processing industry invest time, energy, and money into preventing contamination of any sort, but to make sure all those investments pay off the way they should, they need a full understanding of how the microorganism grows.  That’s what researchers at the Institute of Food Research in Norwich in the United Kingdom studied.  They prepared the tests for spore germination by sonicating a suspension of spores in an ultrasonic cleaning bath for 5 minutes.

For further information visit www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

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