Biological effect abundance analysis of hemolytic pathogens based on engineered biomimetic sensor

Conventional pathogen detection strategies based on the molecular structure or chemical characteristics of biomarkers can only provide the “physical abundance” of microorganisms, but cannot reflect the “biological effect abundance” in the true sense. To address this issue, we report an erythrocyte membrane-encapsulated biomimetic sensor cascaded with CRISPR-Cas12a (EMSCC). Taking hemolytic pathogens as the target model, we first constructed an erythrocyte membrane-encapsulated biomimetic sensor (EMS). Only hemolytic pathogens with biological effects can disrupt the erythrocyte membrane (EM), resulting in signal generation. Then the signal was amplified by cascading CRISPR-Cas12a, and more than 6.67 × 10⁴-fold improvement in detection sensitivity compared to traditional erythrocyte hemolysis assay was achieved. Notably, compared with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) or enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA)-based quantification methods, EMSCC can sensitively respond to the pathogenicity change of pathogens. For the detection of simulated clinical samples based on EMSCC, we obtained an accuracy of 95% in 40 samples, demonstrating its potential clinical value.