Magnetotactic Phage-based Microrobotic Systems for the Detection of Live Bacteria

The concept of a novel biosensing system for the detection of bacteria and bacterial growth that could potentially offer shorter detection periods, specificities, and higher sensitivities compared with conventional methods is briefly described. The proposed biosensing microsystem uses magnetotactic bacteria that can be controlled by software and a microelectronic circuit embedded in the detection microsystem. These magnetotactic bacteria attach themselves to microbeads previously coated with special virus called phages. By controlling the swimming path of the magnetotactic bacteria, a sweep of the sample that potentially contains the pathogenic bacteria would be performed. Specificity could be assured since binding would normally occur only during a collision between a microbead being pushed by a magnetotactic bacterium and a target bacterium that will attach only to the microbead if it has been previously coated by the appropriate phages. The process would complete by orienting the displacement of the microbeads being pushed by the magnetotactic bacteria towards arrays of microelectrodes for detecting the presence of potential target bacteria