Touchable 3D hierarchically structured polyaniline nanoweb for capture and detection of pathogenic bacteria

Kyung Hoon Kim,Nam-Ho Bae,Sung-Jin Chang,Chi Hyun Kim,Seok Jae Lee,Young Mee Jung,Minho Yang,Younseong Song,Yong Tae Kim,Kyoung G Lee,Bong Gill Choi

doi:10.1186/s40580-021-00280-9

Abstract

A bacteria-capturing platform is a critical function of accurate, quantitative, and sensitive identification of bacterial pathogens for potential usage in the detection of foodborne diseases. Despite the development of various nanostructures and their surface chemical modification strategies, relative to the principal physical contact propagation of bacterial infections, mechanically robust and nanostructured platforms that are available to capture bacteria remain a significant problem. Here, a three-dimensional (3D) hierarchically structured polyaniline nanoweb film is developed for the efficient capture of bacterial pathogens by hand-touching. This unique nanostructure ensures sufficient mechanical resistance when exposed to compression and shear forces and facilitates the 3D interfacial interactions between bacterial extracellular organelles and polyaniline surfaces. The bacterial pathogens (Escherichia coli O157:H7, Salmonella enteritidis, and Staphylococcus aureus) are efficiently captured through finger-touching, as verified by the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis. Moreover, the real-time PCR results of finger-touched cells on a 3D nanoweb film show a highly sensitive detection of bacteria, which is similar to those of the real-time PCR using cultured cells without the capturing step without any interfering of fluorescence signal and structural deformation during thermal cycling.Graphic

Highlights

Early-stage detection of pathogenic bacteria, especially foodborne pathogens, becomes a most important task because they cause severe hospitalization and even mortality from foodborne illnesses [1–4]
3.1 Synthesis and bacterial capturability of 3D hierarchically structured polyaniline nanoweb (3D HPN) The 3D HPN films are fabricated through the controlled growth of polyaniline nanofibers onto nanopillar arrays
The nano-scaled and soft-structured polyaniline nanofibers are grown on the top and sidewalls of nanopillars, resulting in the highly ordered 3D hierarchical structure and nanoweb morphology of the 3D HPN film (Fig. 1f‒h)

Summary

Introduction

Early-stage detection of pathogenic bacteria, especially foodborne pathogens, becomes a most important task because they cause severe hospitalization and even mortality from foodborne illnesses [1–4]. These diseases are typically spread by everyday used items or food and human-to-human skin contacts (Fig. 1a) [5, 6]. To upgrade the pathogenic bacterial recovery, intensive researches have been carried out to understand the influence of topography on the bacteria and their physicochemical interaction with the structures [17, 18]. The development of an effective pathogen detection system can, be achieved when the underlying physicochemical interactions, various nanostructures, and their surface chemical modification strategies are well explored [25]

Methods

Results

Conclusion