A microfluidic device and instrument prototypes for the detection of <i>Escherichia coli</i> in water samples using a phage-based bioluminescence assay
Luis F. Alonzo, Troy Hinkley, Andrew Miller, Ryan Calderon, Spencer Garing, John R. Williford, Nick Clute-Reinig, Ethan Spencer, Michael Friend, Damian Madan, Van Dinh, David Bell, Bernhard H. Weigl, Sam R. Nugen, Kevin P. Nichols, Anne-Laure M. Le Ny
Abstract
CFU in 100 mL of drinking water within 5.5 hours. The microfluidic device was designed and tested to process up to 100 mL of real-world drinking water samples with turbidities below 10 NTU. Prototypes of custom instrumentation, compatible with our valveless microfluidic device and capable of performing all of the assay's units of operation with minimal user intervention, demonstrated similar assay performance to that obtained on the benchtop assay. This research is the first step towards a faster, portable, and semi-automated, phage-based microfluidic platform for improved in-field water quality monitoring in low-resource settings.