Pathogenic microorganisms detection

Precise and rapid detection the pathogenic microorganisms is one the most important problems of clinical medicine. However, some of the conventional approaches are time-consuming and depend on the different conditions observance. Therefore, the immunoassay is widely used for the identification of the small amounts of the biological active compounds due to its selectivity and sensitivity. 

Because of minimal sample preparation and minimally invasive approaches Raman spectroscopy has the potential to gain new insights into viral and microbial biochemistry as well as a rapid identification of pathogenic microorganisms. In this chapter the unique potential of several Raman spectroscopic techniques for medical and pharmaceutical issues is discussed, which focus on the analysis of viruses as well as on microbial detection... 

Biosensors based on acoustic transduction have been used mainly for the detection of pathogenic microorganisms such as Escherechia coli (Pyun el al., 1998), other examples of applications involve the use of an acoustic sensor to detect genetically modified organisms (GMO) (Mannelli et al., 2003). 

The fact that pathogenic microorganisms can be present in low numbers often hampers their detection. Conventional cnlturing may take several days and underestimate the microbial load. Therefore, more rapid and sensitive microbial detection methods wonld be nsefnl for many applications to complement or replace these traditional cnltnre methods. As SPC is a fast and sensitive tool to detect low numbers of microorganisms, it has been used for the detection and quantification of several important species. 

In the large packing establishments meat is inspected by the Bureau of Animal Industry Inspectors and meat infected with pathogenic microorganisms is eliminated. Ante-mortem inspection removes many diseased animals but rigid inspection of the carcasses immediately after slaughter detects the remainder. Nevertheless 25 to 40% of the meat consumed in the U. S. is said to escape inspection due to the fact that it is marketed through channels in which there is no inspection. 

Application areas for DNA biosensors include the detection of chemically induced DNA damage by toxic compounds and the detection of pathogenic microorganisms through the hybridization of species-specific DNA sequences. However, this section will only concentrate on the development of DNA-based sensors for toxic compound detection as microorganism detection is not covered in this chapter. 

Such biosensors have many potential applications — for example, identification of genes that are implicated in inherited diseases, single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP), and some mutations that play a major role in causing diseases [20-21], identification of pathogenic microorganisms which are responsible for infectious diseases [22-23], transgenic organisms for food quality [24], detection... 

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