Recent progress on microfluidic biosensors for rapid detection of pathogenic bacteria

Rapid on-site detection of pathogenic bacteria with high sensitivity and specificity is becoming an urgent need in public health assurance, medical diagnostics, environmental monitoring, and food safety fields. Despite being reliable and widely used, the existing methods of bacteria detection are cumbersome and time-consuming, which is not conducive to field detection. Microfluidic lab-on-a-chip technology has provided a detective tool for various analytes, due to its miniaturization, portability and low reagent consumption. Within this progress report, advances in the bacteria detection using microfluidic biosensors were discussed. Typical methods for pathogenic bacteria capture, separation and detection were introduced respectively in the first part. Then key applications of microfluidic biosensor-based rapid bacteria detection were presented. Finally, we made a conclusion and discussed possible research prospects in aspects of microfluidic biosensors for rapid detection of pathogenic bacteria.