Biosensors & Bioelectronics

Shramik Sengupta

Publications

• Research Article
  Novel Electrical Method for the Rapid Determination of Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) and Assay of Bactericidal/Bacteriostatic Activity
  Author(s): Sachidevi Puttaswamy, Byung-Doo Lee, Banoo Amighi, Sounak Chakraborty and Shramik SenguptaSachidevi Puttaswamy, Byung-Doo Lee, Banoo Amighi, Sounak Chakraborty and Shramik Sengupta
  
  We present a rapid (4-hr) electrical method for Antibiotic Susceptibility Testing that not only yields the MIC of candidate antibiotics, but also simultaneously determines the antibiotics’ effect on the bacteria (bactericidal/bacteriostatic). Unlike conventional “impedance microbiology” methods that rely on measuring the effects of bacterial metabolism on the conductance/impedance of the suspension at a single chosen frequency, our method uses measurements at 500 frequencies between 1 KHz and 100 MHz to estimate the amount of electric charge stored due to charge-polarization at intact cell-membranes of living bacteria (the suspension “bulk capacitance”). By doing so, we are able to track the number of live bacteria in suspensions as the observations are taken (every 1 hour). It thus determines whether the numbers of viable bacteria present is increasing (.. Read More»
  

  Abstract PDF