Measuring bacterial metabolism and antibioticsusceptibility : using silicon nanowire field-effect transistor.

Sammanfattning: Antimicrobial resistance is considered by many prominent researcher and scientist as a profound global health crisis that us humans must face in the next decade. It is threatening the effectiveness of these once-reliable weapons against bacterial infections and leaving us susceptible to pathogenic agents. The indiscriminate overprescription of antibiotic in healthcare and animal husbandry, has led to an increased emergence of “super bugs”— a resistant strain of bacteria that were once susceptible to antibiotic—. The escalating creation of those resistant bacteria has been coupled with a proliferation of research papers that seek to explain the working mechanism of antibiotics and their efficacy on the bacterial pathogens, however these efforts often fall short of explaining the impact that antibiotics has on the bacterial metabolism. This project utilizes an established technology, specifically silicone nano-wire ion-selective field-effect transistor in an innovative approach to discern alteration in the metabolic pathways induced by various antibiotics. The methodology involves measuring extracellular acidity of the tested culture and converting it to an electrical signal to extract valuable information about the metabolic process of the bacteria, and how is altered in the presence of antibiotics. Empirical observations pertaining bacteriostatic antibiotics suggests comprehensive suppression of metabolic pathways, encompassing the efflux transition from acetyl-CoA to acetate, resulting an elevated pH level in cultures treated with bacteriostatic agents relative to their wild-type counterparts. Our experimental data also indicates a shift in bacterial metabolic and physiological responses to bactericidal antibiotic-induced stress which include an increased respiration rate, and a heightened activity of the TCA cycle in the test group with bactericidal antibiotics, causing acetate uptake from the medium and decelerating the acidification of the treated culture compared to the wild-type. The results clearly demonstrate a successful utilization of the chip to further study the effects that antibiotics have on bacteria and the interplay between bacterial metabolism and antibiotic efficacy.