A volumetric meter chip for point-of-care quantitative detection of bovine catalase for food safety control

• The meter chip is a standalone point-of-care diagnostic tool with visible readouts of quantification results.
• A fast and low cost fabrication protocol (~3 min and ~$0.2 per chip) of meter chip was proposed.
• The chip may hold the potential for rapid scaning of bovine mastitis in cattle farms for food safety control.

A volumetric meter chip was developed for quantitative point-of-care (POC) analysis of bovine catalase, a bioindicator of bovine mastitis, in milk samples. The meter chip displays multiplexed quantitative results by presenting the distance of ink bar advancement that is detectable by the naked eye. The meter chip comprises a poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) layer, a double-sided adhesive (DSA) layer and a glass slide layer fabricated by the laser-etching method, which is typically simple, rapid (∼3 min per chip), and cost effective (∼$0.2 per chip). Specially designed “U shape” reaction cells are covered by an adhesive tape that serves as an on-off switch, enabling the simple operation of the assay. As a proof of concept, we employed the developed meter chip for the quantification of bovine catalase in raw milk samples to detect catalase concentrations as low as 20 μg/mL. The meter chip has great potential to detect various target analytes for a wide range of POC applications.

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