Optical Fiber Biosensor with Self-Assembled Nanoscale Coatings for Rapid Detection of Methicilin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus

Highly sensitive label-free dual sensor array for rapid detection of wound bacteria

“…This minimum detectable concentration is 5 orders of magnitude lower than previously developed electrochemical bacterial sensors. To the best of our knowledge, similar sensitivity values have not yet been achieved for direct in situ measurement without the use of molecular labels or cytotoxic materials (Dargaville et al 2013;Heflin et al 2012;Lillehoj et al 2014;Mannoor et al 2012;Radke and Alocilja 2005;Varshney and Li 2009;Ward et al 2014). High sensitivity can be attributed to the interdigitated sensor design, increasing the effective sensing area and limiting edge effects resulting from partial attachment of bacteria cells (Liu et al 2014), and further improvement by incorporating the chitosan coating.…”

“…Biosensors are miniaturized devices that combine a biological sensing element and a transducer (Blum and Coulet 1991), and have the potential to provide equally reliable results as conventional instruments in much shorter times. Previous attempts at developing infection detection biosensors (Dutta et al 2005;Heflin et al 2012;Lillehoj et al 2014;Mannoor et al 2012; Varshney and Li 2009;Ward et al 2014;Wu et al 2014), however, have suffered from a number of limitations including the inability to operate in situ (Rackus et al 2015;Yoo and Lee 2016), lengthy detection times (Pejcic et al 2006), lack of sensitivity, use of cytotoxic materials or materials that are unstable in vivo (Dargaville et al 2013;Glinel et al 2012) , and a need for large external equipment yielding them infeasible for wearable operation (Sin et al 2014;Weingarten et al 2010). These limitations are in part due to the complexity of biosensor design for operation in biological fluids, as sensor sensitivity and specificity may be compromised by low analyte concentrations and non-specific biofouling of the sensor surface (Kricka 1998).…”