Fast and Inexpensive Detection of Bacterial Viability and Drug Effectiveness through Metabolic Monitoring

Rapid measurement of waterborne bacterial viability based on difunctional gold nanoprobe

Rapid measurement of waterborne bacterial viability is crucial for ensuring the safety of public health. Herein, we proposed a colorimetric assay for rapid measurement of waterborne bacterial viability based on a difunctional gold nanoprobe (dGNP). This versatile dGNP is composed of bacteria recognizing parts and signal indicating parts, and can generate color signals while recognizing bacterial suspensions of different viabilities. This dGNP-based colorimetric assay has a fast response and can be accomplished within 10 min. Moreover, the proposed colorimetric method is able to measure bacterial viability between 0% and 100%. The method can also measure the viability of other bacteria including Staphylococcus aureus, Shewanella oneidensis, and Escherichia coli O157H7. Furthermore, the proposed method has acceptable recovery (95.5–104.5%) in measuring bacteria-spiked real samples. This study offers a simple and effective method for the rapid measurement of bacterial viability and therefore should have application potential in medical diagnosis, food safety, and environmental monitoring.

A colorimetric method is proposed to measure waterborne bacterial viability by using a difunctional gold nanoprobe that can generate color signals while recognizing bacterial suspensions of different viabilities.

Analysis of Microbial Cell Viability in a Liquid Using an Acoustic Sensor

A method was developed for the rapid analysis and evaluation of the viability of bacteriophage-infected Escherichia coli (E.coli) XL-1 directly in a conducting suspension by using a slot-mode sensor. The method is based on recording the changes in the depth and frequency of resonant absorption peaks in the frequency dependence of the insertion loss of the sensor before and after the biologic interaction of E. coli with specific bacteriophages. The possibility was shown of recording the infection of E. coli with specific bacteriophages and assessing its viability in suspensions with a conductivity of 4.5-30 μS/cm. Сontrol experiments were carried out with non-specific interactions of E. coli cells with bacteriophages, in which no changes in the sensor variables were observed. The optimal informational variable for estimating the number of viable cells was the degree of change in the depth of the resonant peaks in the frequency dependence of the insertion loss of the sensor. The limit of cell detection was ∼10²-10³ cells mL^-1, with an analysis time of about 5 min. An additional advantage of the sensor was the availability of a removable liquid container, which allows one to use it repeatedly and to facilitate the cleaning of the container from spent samples. The results are promising for the detection of bacteria and assessment of their viability in solutions with conductivity in the range 4.5-30 µS/cm.