labeling or multistep procedures, providing additional advantages
of this design. An attractive feature of the sAMP sensor is the
ability to differentiate between live and dead bacteria. Viable
bacteria are the direct cause of bacterial infections. The culturing
and colony forming assay is the main technique able to discriminate
live from dead bacteria, without sample pretreatment
but the method requires several days. Live/dead assays using
fluorescence labels use costly fluorescence dyes and involve extensive
sample preparation and data processing time, which limit
the broad applicability of this method for screening purposes.
Other methods, such as PCR, although sensitive, are unable to
differentiate live and dead bacteria. The method described in this
work provides a new pathway for the development of devices for
detecting viable bacterial pathogens. The preparation and assay
time of the sAMP sensor are significantly lower than current
bacteria detection methods. Furthermore, the method could be
extended to measure other species such as fungus and viruses,
based on the engineered sequence targeting the characteristic
components of these microbes