Gold nanoparticle labeling based ICP-MS detection/measurement of bacteria, and their quantitative photothermal destruction

Abstract

Bacteria such as Salmonella and E. coli present a great challenge in public health care in today’s society. Protection of public safety against bacterial contamination and rapid diagnosis of infection require simple and fast assays for the detection and elimination of bacterial pathogens. After utilizing Salmonella DT104 as an example bacterial strain for our investigation, we report a rapid and sensitive assay for the qualitative and quantitative detection of bacteria by using antibody affinity binding, popcorn shaped gold nanoparticle (GNPOPs) labeling, surfance enchanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) detection. For qualitative analysis, our assay can detect Salmonella within 10 min by Raman spectroscopy; for quantitative analysis, our assay has the ability to measure as few as 100 Salmonella DT104 in a 1 mL sample (100 CFU/mL) within 40 min. Based on the quantitative detection, we investigated the quantitative destruction of Salmonella DT104, and the assay’s photothermal efficiency in order to reduce the amount of GNPOPs in the assay to ultimately to eliminate any potential side effects/toxicity to the surrounding cells in vivo. Results suggest that our assay may serve as a promising candidate for qualitative and quantitative detection and elimination of a variety of bacterial pathogens.

Applications of Gold Nanoparticles in Non-Optical Biosensors

“…Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) combines the high-temperature ionization characteristics of inductively coupled plasma with the sensitive and fast scanning of mass spectrometers, which is a high sensitive technique for element, isotope and morphological analysis [136]. The technology offers extremely low detection limit and an extremely wide dynamic linear range with a working range more than 9 orders of magnitude, and owns the advantages of simple spectral lines, low interference, high analytical precision, rapid analysis and high specificity, which is widely used in environmental protection, biology, medicine, metallurgy, nuclear material analysis and other fields [137,138,139,140,141,142,143]. In the past few years, the strategies combining ICP-MS technology with metal nanoparticle labels were developed to achieve ultra-high sensitivity analysis in biomolecular analysis [144,145,146,147,148,149,150,151,152].…”

Colorimetric and electrochemical detection of pathogens in water using silver ions as a unique probe

“…Lin and Hamme have used antibody labeled gold nanoparticles for the detection of Salmonella and E . coli through ICP-MS that gives a quantitative detection of the pathogens in the contaminated samples by measuring the number of labeled gold nanostructures bound to the pathogens 33 . Li et al detect bacterial load by using specific antibody-gold nanoparticle conjugate, and digesting pathogen-bound gold nanoparticle conjugate and analyzing it with ICP-MS of gold ions 34 .…”

Functionalized gold nanoparticles for sample preparation: A review

“…ICP‐MS is a powerful tool for elemental analysis, and also recently used for detecting and sizing metallic nanoparticles including GNPs . In addition, the quantitative analysis and surface ligand density characterization of GNPs with this technique has also been demonstrated .…”