Quantitation of bacteria through adsorption of intracellular biomolecules on carbon paste and screen-printed carbon electrodes and voltammetry of redox-active probes

A new electrochemical method for the quantitation of bacteria that is rapid, inexpensive, and amenable to miniaturization is reported. Cyclic voltammetry was used to quantitate M. luteus, C. sporogenes, and E. coli JM105 in exponential and stationary phases, following exposure of screen-printed carbon working electrodes (SPCEs) to lysed culture samples. Ferricyanide was used as a probe. The detection limits (3s) were calculated and the dynamic ranges for E. coli (exponential and stationary phases), M. luteus (exponential and stationary phases), and C. sporogenes (exponential phase) lysed by lysozyme were 3 × 10⁴ to 5 × 10⁶ colony-forming units (CFU) mL⁻¹, 5 × 10⁶ to 2 × 10⁸ CFU mL⁻¹ and 3 × 10³ to 3 × 10⁵ CFU mL⁻¹, respectively. Good overlap was obtained between the calibration curves when the electrochemical signal was plotted against the dry bacterial weight, or between the protein concentration in the bacterial lysate. In contrast, unlysed bacteria did not change the electrochemical signal of ferricyanide. The results indicate that the reduction of the electrochemical signal in the presence of the lysate is mainly due to the fouling of the electrode by proteins. Similar results were obtained with carbon-paste electrodes although detection limits were better with SPCEs. The method described herein was applied to quantitation of bacteria in a cooling tower water sample. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.