Bioinspired Interfaces for Detection and Identification of Bacteria in Blood

Infectious diseases are responsible for a quarter of the deaths worldwide. Even for advanced cases of bacteremia, the count of leukocytes and erythrocytes exceeds with many orders of magnitude the count of prokaryotic cells in the infected blood. A robust and rapid way for capturing, detecting and identifying contaminants in biological and environmental fluids is of urgent need. Using surface chemistry procedures developed in our lab we designed biofunctional surfaces activated with carbohydrates that target the natural ability of bacteria to adhere, colonize and infect. These bioinspired interfaces allowed us to capture a wide range of Gram-positive and Gram-negative contaminants from blood samples. Amyloid stains allowed us to readily visualize and detect the captured bacterial cells. By imaging the dynamic staining of captured bacterial cells we were able to track the kinetics of their staining which revealed unprecedented capabilities for parallel identification of each of the bacterium in a sample containing a mixture of bacterial species. The breaking of century-old traditions of Boolean bacterial bioanalyses reflects the innovative nature of the assays based on the dynamics of staining.