Bacteriophage modified biosensor for Bacillus anthracis spore detection

I&EC 2

Jiehui Wan1, Hong Yang1, I-Hsuan Chen2, Valery A. Petrenko2, and Bryan A. Chin1. (1) Materials Engineering, Auburn University, 275 Wilmore Lab, Auburn, AL 36849, (2) Department of Pathobiology, Auburn University, 253 Greene Hall
The use of Bacillus anthracis as biological weapons in recent years requires a fast, proper recognition of the bacteria. Previous report shows that filamentous phage with intentionally modified surface landscapes can fit to this strong requirement of real time monitoring. The phage has been previously isolated from the billion-clone phage display libraries using affinity selection and propagated in the host bacteria. In this paper, the fabrication, characterization and performance of phage-based magnetostrictive biosensors for detecting Bacillus anthracis spores are reported. The phage was immobilized onto the biosensors using physical adsorption technology. The sensitivity, longevity and specificity of the phage-based biosensors will be presented. The experimental results are confirmed by microscopy photographs. It is experimentally found that the phage-based sensors have a much better longevity than antibody-based sensors and offer the greatest promise for continuous long-time monitoring of biological threats and medical control.