Waterborne diarrheal diseases such as travelers’ diarrhea and cholera remain a threat to public health in many countries. Rapid diagnosis of an infectious disease is critical in preventing the escalation of a disease outbreak into an epidemic. Many of the diagnostic tools for infectious diseases employed today are time-consuming and require specialized laboratory settings and trained personnel. There is hence a pressing need for fit-for-purpose point-of-care diagnostic tools with emphasis in sensitivity, specificity, portability, and low cost. We report work toward thermally reversible biosensors for detection of the carbohydrate-binding domain of the Escherichia coli heat-labile enterotoxin (LTB), a toxin produced by enterotoxigenic E. coli strains, which causes travelers’ diarrhea. The biosensing platform is a hybrid of two materials, combining the optical properties of porous silicon (pSi) interferometric transducers and a thermoresponsive multivalent glycopolymer, to enable recognition of LTB. Analytical performance of our biosensors allows us to detect, using a label-free format, sub-micromolar concentrations of LTB in solution as low as 0.135 μM. Furthermore, our platform shows a temperature-mediated “catch-and-release” behavior, an exciting feature with potential for selective protein capture, multiple readouts, and regeneration of the sensor over consecutive cycles of use.

中文翻译：

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一种可再生的细菌毒素生物传感平台

旅行者腹泻和霍乱等水源性腹泻病仍然威胁着许多国家的公共卫生。快速诊断传染病对于防止疾病暴发升级为流行病至关重要。当今使用的许多传染病诊断工具非常耗时，需要专门的实验室设置和训练有素的人员。因此，迫切需要以敏感性，特异性，便携性和低成本为重点的适合目的的即时诊断工具。我们报告了朝着热可逆生物传感器检测大肠杆菌热不稳定肠毒素（LTB）的碳水化合物结合域的工作，肠毒素是由产肠毒素的大肠杆菌产生的毒素菌株，导致旅行者的腹泻。生物传感平台是两种材料的混合体，结合了多孔硅（pSi）干涉传感器和热响应性多价糖聚合物的光学特性，从而能够识别LTB。生物传感器的分析性能使我们能够使用无标记格式检测溶液中低至0.135μM的亚微摩尔浓度的LTB。此外，我们的平台还显示了温度介导的“捕获和释放”行为，这是一个令人兴奋的功能，具有在连续使用周期内选择性捕获蛋白质，多次读数以及传感器再生的潜力。