Review of Recent Progress in Micro-Systems for the Detection and Analysis of Airborne Microorganisms

Abstract

The spread of airborne microorganisms such as measles, anthrax, and influenza is a major public health threat because it causes severe infectious diseases with high mortality rates. Robust and real-time detection systems are necessary to prevent and control such dangerous biological particles in public places and dwellings. For effective detection, the collection of aerosol particles, the separation of airborne microbes, the concentration of the samples, and the discrimination or detection of pathogens are areas that need to be addressed. Although environmental and social needs are appreciated and required systems have been considered, no complete system has yet been constructed that adequately meets these needs at a level deemed appropriate by the requisite authorities. However, given the advancement in technology outlined herein, the delivery of such a system appears imminent. In this paper, we will review recent advances in microsystem detection and analysis of airborne microorganisms, and concede that some methods were not directly applied to the airborne microbes, but may be useful in the future.

Keywords:

• Airborne microbes
• Micro-system
• Review
• Separation and detection

Acknowledgments

This paper was submitted as part of a Special Issue on Biosensors organized by Dr. Yu Lei of the University of Connecticut.

This work was supported by the Future-Based Technology Development Program (Nano Fields, Grant No. 2010-0029297) and the Happy Tech Program (Grant No. 2010-0020792) through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF), and “The Eco-Technopia 21 Project” through the Korea Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (Grant No. 101-082-035).