1. Deformability Assessment of Waterborne Protozoa Using a Microfluidic-Enabled Force Microscopy Probe.
- Author
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McGrath JS, Quist J, Seddon JR, Lai SC, Lemay SG, and Bridle HL
- Subjects
- Elasticity, Humans, Microfluidics instrumentation, Microscopy, Atomic Force instrumentation, Oocysts chemistry, Single-Cell Analysis, Water Purification instrumentation, Water Purification methods, Cryptosporidium isolation & purification, Cryptosporidium parvum isolation & purification, Drinking Water parasitology, Microfluidics methods, Microscopy, Atomic Force methods
- Abstract
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.
- Published
- 2016
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