UC Irvine

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an opportunistic, biofilm-forming pathogen. P. aeruginosa produces pyocyanin, a secondary metabolite as part of its quorum sensing signaling system activated during biofilm formation. Self-organized plasmonic nanogaps provide enhancements to Raman scattering signals to achieve 10 ng/mL limit of detection of pyocyanin that enables early detection of biofilm formation. We report, for the first time, in-line biofilm detection in microfluidic channels as early as three hours from the onset of bacterial culturing and quantification spanning five-orders of magnitude of pyocyanin concentration during biofilm formation of PA14.