Journal of Medical Diagnostic Methods
Open Access

Abstract

Low-Cost Agglutination Assays for Medical Diagnostic Applications Using a Whole-Cell Biosensor with Tunable Limit of Detection

Caroline Jones

Whole-cell biosensors have the potential to be the foundation for
low-cost, easy-to-use diagnostic tests that can be quickly deployed
for Point-Of-Care (POC) testing, but detecting analytes such
proteins that cannot easily diffuse across the cell membrane has
proven difficult to date. Using an E. coli whole-cell biosensor
surface-displaying nanobodies that bind specifically to a target
protein analyst, we built a novel biosensing platform based on cell
agglutination. We demonstrate the practicality of this architecture
by detecting a simulated analyst at nanomolar quantities as a
proof-of-concept. Furthermore, we demonstrate the flexibility
of the design architecture by developing assays that can detect a
wide variety of model analyst concentrations using simple design
principles and a mathematical model

Published Date: 2021-11-30; Received Date: 2021-10-06