Rapid detection of Staphylococcus aureus by a combination of monoclonal antibody-coated latex and capillary electrophoresis

The rapid detection of pathogenic bacteria is extremely important in biotechnology and clinical diagnosis. CE has been utilized in the field of bacterial analysis for many years, but to some extent, simultaneous separation and identification of certain microbes from complex samples by CE coupled with UV detector is still a challenge. In this paper, we propose a new strategy for rapid separation and identification of Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) in bacterial mixtures by means of specific mAb-coated latex coupled with CZE. An appropriate set of conditions that selectively isolated S. aureus from the microorganisms Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Klebsiella pneumoniae were established. S. aureus could be differentiated from the others by unique peaks in the electropherograms. The validity was also confirmed by LIF with antibodies specific to both the latex and the microbial cells. The LOD is as low as 9.0 x 10(5) colony forming unit/mL. We have also utilized this technology to identify S. aureus in a stool sample coming from a healthy volunteer spiked successfully with S. aureus. This CZE-UV technique can be applied to rapid diagnosis of enteritis caused by S. aureus or other bacterial control-related fields needing rapid identification of target pathogens from microbial mixtures. In theory, this method is suitable for the detection of any bacterium as long as corresponding bacterium-specific antibody-coated latex is available.