Synthesis and characterization of some functional hybrid materials for biosensing applications

Abstract

The detection of bacterial pathogens, especially Escherichia coli O157: H7 (E. coli) newlinehas extensive impact in the food safety measures, water quality monitoring and newlineclinical diagnosis. Conventional and standard bacterial detection methods such as newlineculture and colony counting methods, immunology-based methods and polymerase newlinechain reaction based methods are reported to take up several hours or even a few days newlineto yield results. Owing to this, efforts have been focused on developing bio-detectors newlinethat are portable, offer rapid measurements and shows relatively high sensitivity and newlinespecificity. Although new technologies like biosensors show potential approaches, but newlinefurther research and development is essential before biosensors become a real and newlinereliable choice. New bio-molecular techniques for E. coli O157:H7 detection are newlinebeing developed to improve the biosensor characteristics such as sensitivity and newlineselectivity, also which is rapid, reliable, effective and suitable for in situ analysis. newlineBased on biological molecules, but also on their bio-inspired synthetic counterparts, newlinebiosensors employ different transducers (optical, potentiometric, volt-amperometric, newlinecolorimetric etc.) converting the molecular interaction information into a measurable newlineelectric signal. As the result of a real multi-disciplinary field of science and newlinetechnology, there is lot of scope relating to innovations in the field of fabrication of newlinebiosensors for clinical diagnostic applications which could lead to smaller, faster, and newlinecheaper biosensors systems with ability to provide not only accurate information but newlinealso feedback actions to the real world. In this context, the fabrication of a new newlinegeneration of functional hybrid materials (FHM) based biodevices, where biological, newlineor bio-inspired, molecules are fully integrated with a micro or a nano technological newlineplatform strongly depends on the bio-compatibilization treatments of the devices newlinesurfaces.