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In food industry, detection of spoilage yeasts such as W. anomalus and B. bruxellensis and pathogens such as certain Listeria and E. coli species can be laborious and time-consuming. In the present study, a simple and repeatable technique was developed for rapid yeast detection using a combination of patterned gold coated polymer SERS substrates and gold nanoparticles [1−4]. For the first time, a state-of-the-art time-gated Raman detection approach was used as a complementary technique to show the possibility of using 532-nm pulsed laser excitation and avoid the destructive influence of induced fluorescence [3].
Conventional nanoparticles synthesized by colloidal chemistry are typically contaminated by non-biocompatible by-products (surfactants, anions), which can have negative impacts on many live objects under examination (cells, bacteria) and thus decrease the precision of bioidentification. Here, we explore novel ultrapure laser-synthesized Au-based nanomaterials, including Au NPs and Au Si hybrid nanostructures, as mobile SERS probes in tasks of bacteria detection [3].
We demonstrate successful identification of two types of bacteria (L. innocua and E. coli) and yeast (W. anomalus and B. bruxellensis). They showed several differing characteristic peaks making the discrimination of these yeasts possible without the need for chemometric analysis [2]. The use of composite gold-silicon laser-ablated nanoparticles in combination with the SERS substrate gave distinctive spectra for all the detected species. The detection limit of the studied species varied within 104-107 CFU/ml. The obtained results open up opportunities for non-disturbing investigation of biological systems by profiting from excellent non-disturbing nature of laser-synthesized nanomaterials in combination with outstanding optical detection technologies [2, 3].
[1] Uusitalo et al. 2016, http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2016/ra/c6ra08313g
[2] Uusitalo et al. 2017a, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0260877417302054
[3] Kögler et al. 2018, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jbio.201700225
[4] Uusitalo et al. 2017b, https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/journalArticle/Download?fullDOI=10.1117/1.OE.56.3.037102
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