Culture-free diagnostics of Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection by silver nanorod array based SERS from clinical sputum samples

A surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) based platform for the rapid detection of Pseudomonas aeruginosa has been developed. Pyocyanin (PCN), a major biomarker of P. aeruginosa, has been detected by SERS as low as 5 ppb. SERS spectra of PCN have been utilized to dynamically monitor the bacteria P. aeruginosa growth process. By combining with simple extraction method, the system successfully detected P. aeruginosa infection within 1.5 hours in clinical sputum samples. This is the first time that SERS spectra of PCN are reported to directly detect P. aeruginosa in biofluids and clinical sputum samples.295