Affiliations 

  • 1 Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedfordshire, MK43 0AL England, UK; Biotechnology Research Centre, Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI), P.O. Box 12301, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • 2 Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedfordshire, MK43 0AL England, UK
  • 3 Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedfordshire, MK43 0AL England, UK. Electronic address: i.tothill@cranfield.ac.uk
Biosens Bioelectron, 2016 Apr 15;78:328-36.
PMID: 26649490 DOI: 10.1016/j.bios.2015.11.033

Abstract

A quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) sensor platform was used to develop an immunosensor for the detection of food pathogen Campylobacter jejuni. Rabbit polyclonal antibodies and commercially available mouse monoclonal antibodies against C. jejuni were investigated to construct direct, sandwich and gold-nanoparticles (AuNPs) amplified sandwich assays. The performance of the QCM immunosensor developed using sandwich assay by utilising the rabbit polyclonal antibody as the capture antibody and conjugated to AuNPs as the detection antibody gave the highest sensitivity. This sensor achieved a limit of detection (LOD) of 150 colony forming unit (CFU)mL(-1) of C. jejuni in solution. The QCM sensor showed excellent sensitivity and specificity for Campylobacter detection with low cross reactivity for other foodborne pathogens such as Salmonella Typhimurium, (7%) Listeria monocytogenes (3%) and Escherichia coli (0%). The development of this biosensor would help in the sensitive detection of Campylobacter which can result in reducing pre-enrichment steps; hence, reducing assay time. This work demonstrates the potential of this technology for the development of a rapid and sensitive detection method for C. jejuni.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.