| Bacterial contamination of food and water resources, as well as the increasing incidence of nosocomial infections, has us on our toes, looking for ways of recognizing these elements. In addition, the recent and growing threats to personal and territorial securities make this task even more urgent. Therefore, accurate assessment of the state of current technologies is a prerequisitefor undertaking any course of action towards future improvements. In particular, development of new detection and identification technologies for the plethora of bacterial agents has become increasingly important to scientists and to regulatory agencies. In recent years, there has been much progress in the field of bacterial agents detection, resulting in the development of more accurate, fast, analyte-specific, robust, and cost effective techniques by incorporating emerging technologies from various disciplines.
Principles of Bacterial Detection: Biosensors, Recognition Receptors and Microsystems presents a significant and up-to-date review of various integrated approaches for bacterial detection by distinguished engineers and scientists. This work is a comprehensive approach to bacterial detection, presenting a thorough knowledge of the subject and an effective integration of disciplines in order to appropriately convey the state-of the-art fundamentals and applications of the most innovative approaches.
The book consists of four parts. The first part (Chapters 1–4) is an introduction to pathogenic bacteria and sampling techniques and provides an overview of the rapid microbiological methods. The second part (Chapters 5–20) describes the different transducers used for bacterial detection. It covers the theory behind each technique and delivers a detailed stateof-the-art review for all the new technologies used. The third part (Chapters 21–29) covers the different recognition receptors used in the latest methods for the detection of bacteria. It describes in detail the use of immunoassays, nucleic acids, oligonucleotide microarrays, carbohydrates, aptamers, protein microarrays, bacteriophage, phage display, and molecular imprinted polymers as recognition elements. The fourth part (Chapters 30–36) covers the different microsystems used for detection/identification and bacterial manipulations, mainly bacteria lysis in microfluidics, PCR in microfluidics, dielectrophoresis, ultrasonic manipulation techniques, and mass spectrometry.
We anticipate that the book will be helpful to academicians, practitioners, and professionals working in various fields, including biomedical sciences, physical sciences, microsystems engineering, nanotechnology, veterinary science and medicine, food QA, bioterrorism and security as well as allied health, healthcare and surveillance. Since the fundamentals are also reviewed, we believe that the book will appeal to advanced undergraduate and graduate students who study in areas related to bacterial detection.
We gratefully acknowledge all authors for their participation and contributions, which made this book a reality. We give many thanks to Olivier Laczka and Joseph Piliero for the book cover design. |
