SAMPLION Ltd. exhibition stand before opening of the congress.

This picture represents the stand of SAMPLION Ltd. in PulPaper 2010 Congress exhibition on the day before the opening. This event was a success! 5800 visitors on Wednesday, on the "middle day" of the congress!

In addition to the exhibition stand, an oral presentation was given by Key Account Manager (originally paper industry microbiologist) Juha V. Mentu, which will be sent by request.

Environmental Health Conference in Kuopio, Finland, 27.-28.5.2010.

PMEU Spectrion interested the participants of Environmental Health Conference in Kuopio, Finland. Visitors of exhibition were able to see the selective cultivation of E.coli which can be confirmed by its blue fluorescence when illuminated with "Wood's lamp", emitting UV to the target syringe.

Laboratory Manager Anneli Heitto (left) and Laboratory Engineer Maarit Miskala, both working for FINNOFLAG Ltd, were representing PMEU method in the exhibition. Maarit Miskala also had an oral presentation about the control of swimming waters where PMEU Spectrion significantly helps to collect analytical data faster and with much higher sampling frequence than the traditional laboratory ananlyses.

New SAMPLION website in English is open to visit.

SAMPLION website has now been translated to English. You are very welcome to visit

www.samplion.fi

where you can find further information about Advantages to users, Results, Equipment, Application areas as well as to find our personnel to contact.

Welcome!

SAMPLION Ltd. joins the international PulPaper Exhibition and Conference at the Helsinki Exhibition & Convention Centre 1.-3.6.2010

PMEU methods have been applied in paper industry microbiology since 2002 by company's microbiologists. The main facts and procedures of PMEU biocide and biofilm testings have been presented in Paper and Timber, Vol. 91 / No. 7-8 / 2009.

SAMPLION Ltd. will join PulPaper 2010, 1.-3.6.2010, Helsinki as an exhibitor and welcomes You to visit the company's exhibition stand,

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The reference from the webpages of PulPaper tells "The event, organized by Adforum in cooperation with the Paper Engineers’ Association, AEL and The Finnish Fair Corporation will be the largest and most important show for the pulp, paper, board and converting industry worldwide in 2010. Exhibitors and visitors travel from all over the world to take part in this international event. The last PulPaper show in 2007 attracted 16102 visitors from 78 countries!".

A new era in microbiology: back to Pasteur's times!

The history of microbiology contains several eras with different targets. I will refer them in this way (based on my over 30 years experience as microbiologist and teacher of microbiology and biochemistry):

In the beginning, cultivation and observation of microorganisms was the main target. Doctors like Pasteur and Koch were very innovative and developed intelligent culture medias and vessels to perform very delicate experiments. The everlasting fight against pathogenic microbes was the primary target but Louis Pasteur started to help eg. wine producers to solve their quality problems, caused by microbes.

The combination of microbiology and biochemistry on the second era was very satisfying by solving questions concerning the huge amount of anabolic and catabolic processes included in microbial growth. More and more were also learned in the area of microbial ecology. Questions like "who? what? when? where? how? why?" were partially solved (ref. MADSEN,E.L. 2008. Environmental Microbiology. From Genomes to biochemistry. Blackwell Publishing).

"Third era" can be described by the novel methods to identify bacteria. Biochemical test kits (API etc.) were replaced by Fatty Acide Methylated Ester method (FAME) by Hewlett-Packard on 80's. After it, molecular biology methods, based on ribosomal RNA and DNA, helped to construct the development lines of microorganisms.

Today is the time of new era. We know the "family trees" of bacteria but we should now continue with environmental microbiology and microbial ecology to solve questions like "How, why, by whom and in which conditions will the raw materials of paper industry be biodeteriorated?", "How can we prevent these processes by setting the process conditions unsuitable for those biochemical processes?", "Can we prevent the growth of biofilms and slimes in an ecological way?", "How to prevent selectively the growth of toxin producers like Bacillus cereus in paper and board processes?", how to fight against Legionella in paper industry?".

Names are not the most important thing. Most important is, how the bacteria act in different ecological niches of a paper machine. This work has to be done by using simulations of paper processes which is possible by wet end simulators of research units (as an example: VTT in Jyväskylä, Finland) and laboratory/field instruments (like biofilm detectors in the processes or PMEU incubators by Samplion Ltd.).

The role of PMEU is getting more and more important because this method helps to detect microbial growth of different types (biofilms included) in a very short period of time as well as to test simultaneously the effects of alternative biocides in small-scale tests whose growth parameters match with the growth conditions in the real processes.

We are - and we shall - turn back to the era of Pasteur & Koch: the names are already known, and we shall now investigate, what the contaminating microbes are doing in the industrial processes and how to prevent losses of raw material, machine stops and poor quality of the products by simulating growth processes in small-scale tests, performed in the laboratory or in the field, by the machies themselves.

PMEU applications for water hygiene analyses have been published in "Rakennustarkastuspäivät 2010"

Novel PMEU water hygiene analyses, intended in the quantitative control of total coliforms, E.coli and enterococci, have been published in "Rakennustarkastuspäivät 2010" Conference, Kuopio, Finland at the end of March. This annual event is dedicated to professionals of building regulations and related administration and collected over 200 participants to the beutiful capital of Savo region, in the middle of Saimaa lake district.

SAMPLION Ltd. was exhibiting PMEU Spectrion and its water hygiene applications, now qualified by VTT, alongside Suomen Jätevesi Ltd. which is the major supplier of small-scale waste water purification systems in Finland.

The picture above demonstrates the combination of selective growth medium and MUG-based UV fluorescence confirmation of E.coli. Among the three PMEU syringes, only the one on the left, containing a culture of E.coli, indicates this fluorescence. This PMEU method is now approved by VTT, Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT-S-01705-10) and it also follows the guidelines of international standardization (SFS-EN ISO 9308-3) to fulfill the needs of rapid, quantitative control of hygiene indicator bacteria.

Detection Time as the Variable in Quantitative Microbe Analyses

There are several methods to quantify the count of microbes. Historically the very first of them (if microscopy is excluded) was the use of dilutions series in nutrient broths. This methods was later developed to MPN (Most Probable Number) Method, which was the standard until the rise of Colony Count methods. Colony counts give accurate numbers but suffer of the poorer recovery of the microbial cells, compared to the broth methods. It is also unavailable for certain, difficult types of samples.

"Third Generation" of quantitative mb analyses was established some 30 years ago. They are based on analytical methods which give the results much faster than the traditional methods by measuring some chemical or physical features of the samples which are in a relationship with the count (or activity) of microbes of the original samples.

The increase of the nutrient broth turbidity, caused by the growth of microorganisms, is maybe the most common "3rd Generation" method used today. It is an optical method which gives levels of either total growth or specified microbes (in latter case, selective broths with confirmation tests are applied). An inversed corretation between microbial load and detection time (= the moment of the testing period when turbidity begins to rise) can be found and correlation lines/tables between colony counts and detection times are easy to construct.

The figure above is an example of the growth curves, derived by PMEU Spectrion. X axis shows the time scale of the test, y axis indicates the values of RT. This curve shows that PMEU Spectrion actually illustrates the classic growth curves with the lag, log and stat phases (and, if the cultivation will continue long enough, also the kill phase). The moment when the turbidity begins to rise is inversely related to the count of microbes in the original sample.