| Escherichia coli (E. coli) is the most thoroughly common intestinal microorganism. Some strains of E. coli are the dangerous pathogens and can cause human diseases such as traveler's diarrhea. Infections due to pathogenic E. coli may also disseminate throughout the body, and have been implicated in urinary tract infection, sepsis/meningitis and gastro-intestinal infections. In addition, pathogenic E. coli remains a major cause of infant diarrhea in some regions and countries, with recent outbreaks reporting a mortality rate of 30%. In many countries, health departments routinely detect E. coli density in water or food because E. coli conveys the potential presence of pathogens. The rapid and sensitive detection of E. coli is essential in the field of food industry, public health, clinical diagnosis and environmental monitoring.Current conventional methods for detecting E. coli involve multiple-tube fermentation (MTF), membrane filter (MF), plate count method. Though these methods have the advantage of high accuracy, they are typically time-consuming and labor intensive. Both MTF and MF techniques need vertification of first-step presumptive positives and confirmed tests, and the complete testing process may require from 2 to 4 days. The count of microbial colony on the plate medium is also widely used method, but its usual incubation period is too long (from 24 to 48 h). Therefore, the time-consuming makes these conventional methods unsuitable for use in an industry-based laboratory. As a result, a number of more rapid methods have been developed for the detection of E. coli, including optical detection, immunoassays and electrochemical methods.Though new methods shortened the time for the detection of E. coli, the selectivity and detection limit are poor. For example, some methods could not detect real E. coli sample when the concentration of E. coli is less than 1.0×10~6 cfu/mL. Immunobiosensors, which have attracted great interests because of their promising... |
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