TITLE:
Modern Probe-Assisted Methods for the Specific Detection of Bacteria
AUTHORS:
Arghavan Shabani, Christophe A. Marquette, Rosemonde Mandeville, Marcus F. Lawrence
KEYWORDS:
Bacteria Detection, Probes, Optical, Piezoelectric, and Electrochemical Biosensors
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Biomedical Science and Engineering,
Vol.8 No.2,
February
15,
2015
ABSTRACT: This review intends to present an overview of methods currently under development for the specific and sensitive detection of pathogenic bacteria that exist in a variety of human environments. Bacteria continue to be a major health threat in general, and much effort is being deployed to counteract this problem. In a first instance, current and efficient techniques in use for the detection of bacteria are described. In a second instance, this review serves to compare the more conventional techniques to emerging technologies for the direct (non-labelled) detection of bacteria (referred to as “biosensors”). These approaches are mainly optical, piezoelectric, and electro-chemical in nature. They are cost-effective, quite sensitive, and potentially portable for rapid on-site/real-time detection, and rapid prevention. These devices are comprised of specific chemical/ biochemical probes immobilized onto physical transducers. This work also presents comparisons between the efficiencies (assay time and sensitivity) of various techniques being employed.