Determination of Pathogens by Electrophoretic and Spectrometric Techniques

Abstract

In modern medical diagnostics, where analytical chemistry plays a key role, fast and accurate identification of pathogens is becoming increasingly important. Infectious diseases pose a growing threat to public health due to population growth, international air travel, bacterial resistance to antibiotics, and other factors. For instance, the detection of SARS-CoV-2 in patient samples is a key tool to monitor the spread of the disease. While there are several techniques for identifying pathogens by their genetic code, most of these methods are too expensive or slow to effectively analyze clinical and environmental samples that may contain hundreds or even thousands of different microbes. Standard approaches (e.g., culture media and biochemical assays) are known to be very time- and labor-intensive. The purpose of this review paper is to highlight the problems associated with the analysis and identification of pathogens that cause many serious infections. Special attention was paid to the description of mechanisms and the explanation of the phenomena and processes occurring on the surface of pathogens as biocolloids (charge distribution). This review also highlights the importance of electromigration techniques and demonstrates their potential for pathogen pre-separation and fractionation and demonstrates the use of spectrometric methods, such as MALDI-TOF MS, for their detection and identification.

Keywords:

• Electrophoresis
• LDI
• MALDI
• pathogens
• spectrometric techniques

Disclosure statement

The authors have declared no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

The study was supported by National Science Centre Poland grant OPUS 19 2020/37/B/ST4/02136 “A new approach in identifying microorganisms with particular regard to viruses”, by Ministry of Health of the Czech Republic (Grant No. NU22-05-00110) and by the Czech Academy of Sciences (Institutional Support RVO:68081715).