Introduction Peter Kusstatscher, Tomislav Cernava, Stefan Liebminger & Gabriele Berg. “Replacing Conventional Decontamination of Hatching Eggs with A Natural Defense Strategy Based On Antimicrobial, Volatile Pyrazines”. Scientific Reports. Published on October 16, 2017.
The article chosen is “Replacing Conventional Decontamination of Hatching Eggs with A Natural Defense Strategy Based On Antimicrobial, Volatile Pyrazines”, written by Kusstatscher, Cernava, Liebminger and Berg (2017). The article discusses on the possible new decontamination technology for chicken eggs using natural occurring pyrazine in replacement of environmentally harmful formaldehyde.
Methods used include the application of disinfectants by wiping, spraying, and dipping but, arguably, the most effective way of disinfection of hatching eggs is fumigation with formaldehyde (S. Cadirci, 2008). Formaldehyde (H2CO, formalin, formol) is a gas at room temperature and it is readily soluble in water. It is commonly used as a disinfectant, as it is cheap, not corrosive, and kills most bacteria and fungi (including their spores) (Braswell et al., 1970; Acklund et al., 1980; Williams, 1980). Besides being an excellent anti-microbial agent, is also a toxic chemical and, as such, can seriously damage the dormant embryo if fumigation is carried out improperly (S. Cadirci, 2008 & SEPA). Moreover, formaldehyde is also linked to adverse health effects and classified as a pollutant. It has been known for a long time that formaldehyde-induced pathogenesis including bronchitis, pneumonia and cancer.
Due to harmful health effects, efficient alternatives are needed that can replace formaldehyde in industry-scale hatcheries with a new safe and natural occurring pyrazines. In particular, pyrazine derivatives exhibit wide range of pharmaceutical activities as anti-inflammatory, anticancer, antidiabetic and diuretic and it is noteworthy that, several substituted pyrazine derivatives demonstrated a marked inhibiting effect on tuberculosis (TB) (Hareesh et al., 2015). In this context, alkyl-substituted pyrazines were detected as determinants of the strong antimicrobial effects and confirmed as the main antimicrobial volatile organic compounds (VOC) in the headspace of plant-associated P. polymyxa isolates.
Article summary As indicated in the article, decontamination technology of hatching eggs with formaldehyde fumigation gave harmful effects in environment especially when they couldn’t control the escaped formaldehyde gases to the surrounding. In this study, they found 5-isobutyl-2,3-dimethylpyrazine as a model pyrazine, which has a similar antimicrobial efficiency to the pyrazine mixture that is emitted by P. polymyxa. This study also focus on the evaluation of a decontamination strategy of hatching eggs using 5-isobutyl-2,3-dimethylpyrazine as an antimicrobial active model pyrazine to replace formaldehyde.
To test the hypothesis, the researchers take eggs sample from four different places; supermarket, farmers and farm-gate sale that undergoes differing farming methods. Then undergo active treatment and passive treatment. Active evaporation was highly efficient in all samples and led to statistically significant colony forming units (CFU) reductions, whereas passive treatment showed reducing effects in two of four tested groups only. Thus microbial load was significantly reduced after pyrazine treatments. In their first assessment, pyrazine treatment was shown to have comparable decontamination rates of 99.6% in comparison to formaldehyde fumigation that leads to a reduction of 99.85% for all present bacteria.
Critical evaluation This article provides a new decontamination technology for chicken eggs to overcome risks related to pathogen propagation in hatcheries. The authors of this article are really expert in field environmental biotechnology and this article may benefit the scientific field and industrial technology with a new decontamination technology that might not only be used in hatching eggs but also in various industries. Hatching eggs are affected by microbial contaminations and are usually treated with formaldehyde to guarantee a safe chicken development from typical microbial contaminations in large-scale hatcheries caused by Salmonella, Pseudomonas, Micrococcus, or Escherichia. However, formaldehyde causes harmful effect to the environment and human health which are not good to be continuously used. Thus, VOC based pyrazine found in natural plant could be used to replace formaldehyde in hatching eggs. Moreover this article is the first to suggest and test the decontamination of microbes in hatching eggs using pyrazine.
The methods used to investigate the decontamination effect using pyrazines were suitable and well explained with the figure showing the results and explanations very helpful for readers to understand the full picture of the study. Furthermore, additional explanations of the terms used in the experiments as stated at the end of the article allow the readers to better understand this article. A brief explanation on decontamination technology in hatching eggs, harmful effect of formaldehyde and antimicrobial effect of pyrazines in the introduction was very helpful for the readers to better understand the importance of using natural substance to protect the environment and human health thus warn the people from continuously using harmful substances in food processing.
Additionally, this article gave a new understanding on why the vegetables that serve as natural source for pyrazines should be consumed at the early stage in human life. Vegetables such as pumpkins, beetroots, silver beets, carrots, broccoli, cucumber, asparagus and lettuce are known having various pyrazine compounds. Especially pumpkins, carrots and broccoli were being introduced to 6 months old baby as their main vegetables during their first meals. Maybe this type of diet in first baby meals to help our baby fight bacteria and microbes in their body since they does not have strong antibody yet. So, further study should include the effect of pyrazine based compound in human and also antibiotic.
In conclusion, Kusstatscher, Cernava, Liebminger and Berg (2017) have presented a research that could have a huge influence on the environmental biotechnology and industrial technology field to reduce use of formaldehyde in hatching eggs as well as to protect environment and human health from harmful effect. Further study should be done to explore wide use of pyrazine as antimicrobial in resistance to disease and various things in the world.
References Hareesh H.N, Nagananda G.S,Minchitha K.U, Swetha S, Ganai S.A, Dhananjaya B.L, Nagaraju N, and Kathyayini N (August, 2015). Synthesis, Free Radical Scavenging Activity, Antimicrobial And Molecular Docking Studies Of Novel Pyrazine 2- Carboxylic Acid Derivatives Of Piperazines. Research Journal of Pharmaceutical, Biological and Chemical Sciences. Retrieved from https://www.rjpbcs.com/pdf/2015_6(4)/[256].pdf
Peter Kusstatscher, Tomislav Cernava, Stefan Liebminger and Gabriele Berg. (October 16, 2017). Replacing Conventional Decontamination of Hatching Eggs with A Natural Defense Strategy Based On Antimicrobial, Volatile Pyrazines. Scientific Reports. Retrieved from https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-13579-7 doi:10.1038/s41598-017-13579-7
S. Cadirci (27 July, 2008). Disinfection of Hatching Eggs by Formaldehyde Fumigation – A Review. Harran University, Sanliurfa, Turkey. European Poultry Science (EPS). Retrieved from https://www.european-poultry-science.com/Disinfection-of-hatching- eggs-by-formaldehyde-fumigation-x2013-a- review,QUlEPTQyMTkwMTImTUlEPTE2MTAxNA.html