Gold nanoparticle based biosensor a novel approach to detect pathogenic microorganisms

Abstract

The objective of the present work is to develop the biosensor based on gold nanoparticle to detect pathogenic microorganisms present in the environmental and clinical samples. In the present study, gold nanoparticle facilitated immuno-dot blot and electrochemical biosensors were developed. These biosensors can be mainly utilized to detect three types of microorganisms such as White Spot Syndrome Virus (WSSV), water polluting parasite Cryptosporidium parvum and mycobacterium tuberculosis present in the real world samples. Data resulted from the experiment indicated that the sensitivity of the immuno-dot blot assay is enhanced by 500 fold when compared to that of conventional method and visually be able to detect up to 10 oocysts/mL at a minimal processing period. The present work is further extended to develop a simple and sensitive gold nanoparticle based electrochemical immuno sensor to detect C. parvum in drinking water. The results obtained from the experiment indicated that the sensitivity of electrochemical immuno sensor was enhanced by gold nanoparticle with the limit of detection of 3 oocysts/ mL at minimum processing period. It was also evidenced that the gold nanoparticle based electrochemical immuno sensor showed higher sensitivity, acceptable precision, reproducibility, stability and can be readily applied to monitor multi analytes present in the environment as compared to that of conventional immuno assays. The present work was also extended to study the biomedical utility of gold nanoparticle in biosensor development. It is concluded that the developed gold nanoparticle based immune and electrochemical biosensor can be applied to detect pathogenic microorganism present in the environmental and clinical samples with superior sensitivity and specificity over the conventional method. It is also suggested that the gold nanoparticle can be used to enhance the performance of immuno and DNA biosensor to detect the pathogenic microorganisms at earlier stage. newline newline newline