Coliforms are one of the most common families of bacteria responsible for water contamination. Certain coliform strains can be extremely toxic, and even fatal if consumed. Current technologies for coliform detection are expensive, require multiple complicated steps, and can take up to 24 hours to produce accurate results. Recently, open-channel, paper-based microfluidic devices have become popular for rapid, inexpensive, and accurate bioassays. In this work, we have created an integrated microfluidic coliform lysis and detection device by fabricating customizable omniphilic regions via direct printing of omniphilic channels on an omniphobic, fluorinated paper. This paper-based device is the first of its kind to demonstrate successful cell lysing on-chip, as it can allow for the flow and control of both high and low surface tension liquids, including different cell lysing agents. The fabricated microfluidic device was able to successfully detect E. coli, via the presence of the coliform-specific enzyme, β-galactosidase, at a concentration as low as ∼10⁴ CFU mL⁻¹. Further, E. coli at an initial concentration of 1 CFU mL⁻¹ could be detected after only 6 hours of incubation. We believe that these devices can be readily utilized for real world E. coli contamination detection in multiple applications, including food and water safety.

中文翻译：

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在印刷纸基微流体装置上裂解和直接检测大肠菌群。

大肠菌群是造成水污染的最常见细菌家族之一。某些大肠菌菌株可能具有剧毒，如果食用甚至会致命。目前的大肠菌群检测技术价格昂贵，需要多个复杂的步骤，并且可能需要长达 24 小时才能产生准确的结果。最近，开放通道、纸基微流体装置因快速、廉价且准确的生物测定而变得流行。在这项工作中，我们通过在全憎氟化纸上直接打印全嗜通道来制造可定制的全嗜区域，从而创建了集成的微流体大肠菌裂解和检测装置。这种纸基设备是同类设备中第一个成功证明片上细胞裂解的设备，因为它可以允许高和低表面张力液体（包括不同的细胞裂解剂）的流动和控制。通过大肠菌特异性酶β-半乳糖苷酶的存在，所制造的微流体装置能够成功检测大肠杆菌，其浓度低至~10 ⁴ CFU mL ^-1。此外，仅在孵育6小时后就可以检测到初始浓度为1CFU mL ^-1的大肠杆菌。我们相信这些设备可以轻松用于现实世界中多种应用中的大肠杆菌污染检测，包括食品和水安全。