A quantitative dielectrophoretic tracking method to identify persistent microbial subpopulations

What is it about?

This work presents a simple and quantitative method to track fractional microbial subpopulations that persist after heat or silver nanoparticle treatment, based on electrophysiological changes due to alterations in their cell wall or sporozoite structure in the cytoplasm using an electrokinetic microfluidic device.

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Why is it important?

Infectious diseases are among the leading causes of mortality across the world. Although antibiotics are commonly used to deactivate the microorganisms, the development of resistant and persistent strains has challenged public health, thereby highlighting the need for novel and rapid diagnostic platforms that are not based on microbial culture. This label-free dielectrophoretic method can characterize individual microbial subpopulations with phenotypically different alterations within heterogene