What Do Bacteria Sound Like? Bacterial Soundtracks Revealed by Nanotechnology

Artist’s impression of a graphene drum detecting nanomotion of a single bacterium. Credit: Irek Roslon, TU Delft

Graphene for fast detection of antibiotic resistance

This research has enormous implications for the detection of antibiotic resistance. The experimental results were unequivocal: If the bacteria were resistant to the antibiotic, the oscillations just continued at the same level. When the bacteria were susceptible to the drug, vibrations decreased until one or two hours later, but then they were completely gone. Thanks to the high sensitivity of graphene drums, the phenomenon can be detected using just a single cell.

Farbod Alijani: “For the future, we aim at optimizing our single-cell graphene antibiotic sensitivity platform and validate it against a variety of pathogenic samples. So that eventually it can be used as an effective diagnostic toolkit for fast detection of antibiotic resistance in clinical practice.” Peter Steeneken concludes: “This would be an invaluable tool in the fight against antibiotic resistance, an ever-increasing threat to human health around the world.”

Reference: “Probing nanomotion of single bacteria with graphene drums” by Irek E. Rosłoń, Aleksandre Japaridze, Peter G. Steeneken, Cees Dekker and Farbod Alijani, 18 April 2022, Nature Nanotechnology.
DOI: 10.1038/s41565-022-01111-6

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