Urinary tract infections (UTIs) result in over 10 million doctor visits each year. 80-90% of these infections are caused by uropathogenic E.coli bacteria. Current diagnostic methods take at least 2-3 days and are quite labor-intensive. This delay in diagnosis can lead to empirical, rather than evidence-based, management of UTIs, leading to the rise of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Developing a sensitive, specific, and affordable point-of-care biosensor device is imperative in delivering a speedy and accurate diagnosis. Processing clinical samples is one of the most time-consuming steps of diagnosis, and recently, there have been successful attempts to internalize nanoparticles coated in maltoheptaose by E. coli, avoiding the sample processing step altogether. This study analyzes the potential of maltose-coated gold nanoparticles attached to a double stranded DNA (dsDNA) probe system to detect complementary 16S rRNA as a biosensor for different strains and species of bacteria in pure culture.
