Luciferase-Zinc-Finger System for the Rapid Detection of Pathogenic Bacteria

• DOI: 10.1021/acs.jafc.7b02204
• Publication Date: 2017-07-13T10:37:20Z
• Authors: Chu Shi; Qing Xu; Yue Ge; Ling Jiang; He Huang
• Keywords: 0303 health sciences; 03 medical and health sciences; Bacteria; Food Contamination; Zinc Fingers; Biosensing Techniques; Luciferases; Polymerase Chain Reaction; 3. Good health

Rapid and reliable detection of pathogenic bacteria is crucial for food safety control. Here, we present a novel luciferase-zinc finger system for the detection of pathogens that offers rapid and specific profiling. The system, which uses a zinc-finger protein domain to probe zinc finger recognition sites, was designed to bind the amplified conserved regions of 16S rDNA, and the obtained products were detected using a modified luciferase. The luciferase-zinc finger system not only maintained luciferase activity but also allowed the specific detection of different bacterial species, with a sensitivity as low as 10 copies and a linear range from 10 to 104 copies per microliter of the specific PCR product. Moreover, the system is robust and rapid, enabling the simultaneous detection of 6 species of bacteria in artificially contaminated samples with excellent accuracy. Thus, we envision that our luciferase-zinc finger system will have far-reaching applications.