Deformability Assessment of Waterborne Protozoa Using a Microfluidic-Enabled Force Microscopy Probe

PLoS One

Helen L. Bridle¹  John S. McGrath¹  James R. T. Seddon²  Stanley C. S. Lai²  Serge G. Lemay²  Jos Quist² 

[1] Institute of Biological Chemistry, Biophysics and Bioengineering, School of Engineering and Physical Sciences, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, EH14 4AS, United Kingdom;Nanoionics group, MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology, University of Twente, PO BOX 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands

关键词: Oocysts;    Cryptosporidium parvum;    Absorption spectroscopy;    Cryptosporidium;    Deformation;    Suction;    Curve fitting;    Probability density;   

DOI  :  10.1371/journal.pone.0150438

学科分类：医学（综合）

来源: Public Library of Science

【 摘 要 】

Many modern filtration technologies are incapable of the complete removal of Cryptosporidium oocysts from drinking-water. Consequently, Cryptosporidium-contaminated drinking-water supplies can severely implicate both water utilities and consumers. Existing methods for the detection of Cryptosporidium in drinking-water do not discern between non-pathogenic and pathogenic species, nor between viable and non-viable oocysts. Using FluidFM, a novel force spectroscopy method employing microchannelled cantilevers for single-cell level manipulation, we assessed the size and deformability properties of two species of Cryptosporidium that pose varying levels of risk to human health. A comparison of such characteristics demonstrated the ability of FluidFM to discern between Cryptosporidium muris and Cryptosporidium parvum with 86% efficiency, whilst using a measurement throughput which exceeded 50 discrete oocysts per hour. In addition, we measured the deformability properties for untreated and temperature-inactivated oocysts of the highly infective, human pathogenic C. parvum to assess whether deformability may be a marker of viability. Our results indicate that untreated and temperature-inactivated C. parvum oocysts had overlapping but significantly different deformability distributions.

【 授权许可】

CC BY