Abstract
Bacteria concentration and detection is time-consuming in regular microbiology procedures aimed to facilitate the detection and analysis of these cells at very low concentrations. Traditional methods are effective but often require several days to complete. This scenario results in low bioanalytical and diagnostic methodologies with associated increased costs and complexity. In recent years, the exploitation of the intrinsic electrical properties of cells has emerged as an appealing alternative approach for concentrating and detecting bacteria. The combination of dielectrophoresis (DEP) and impedance analysis (IA) in microfluidic on-chip platforms could be key to develop rapid, accurate, portable, simple-to-use and cost-effective microfluidic devices with a promising impact in medicine, public health, agricultural, food control and environmental areas. The present document reviews recent DEP and IA combined approaches and the latest relevant improvements focusing on bacteria concentration and detection, including selectivity, sensitivity, detection time, and conductivity variation enhancements. Furthermore, this review analyses future trends and challenges which need to be addressed in order to successfully commercialize these platforms resulting in an adequate social return of public-funded investments.
Highlights
Bacteria-related diseases caused by ingestion of contaminated food or water result in considerable morbidity and mortality representing a significant public health threat in developed and developing countries [1,2]
All of these contributions showed that DEP and impedance analysis (IA) for bacteria concentration and detection is being enhanced in various ways, namely, limit of detection (LoD), sensitivity and detection times
In recent years, emerging microfluidic platforms combining dielectrophoretic and impedance analysis for bacteria concentration and detection have been developed for replacing conventional diagnosis techniques
Summary
Bacteria-related diseases caused by ingestion of contaminated food or water result in considerable morbidity and mortality representing a significant public health threat in developed and developing countries [1,2]. Electric field-based separation approaches are attracting interest because of their fastness, potential for automation, simplicity, portability, miniaturization, massive parallelization and labour-saving characteristics [10,11,31] Based on their distinct electrical properties, dielectrophoresis (DEP) is a versatile technique used for the rapid detection and separation of particles. DEP and IA are combined for bacteria improvements related toDue selectivity, selectivity, sensitivity, and detection timesanalysis, are the most studied challenges. This document reviews the state-of-the-art approaches that take advantage oforiginal these two focusing on bacteria concentration and detection, independently of their original growth medium.
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