Highly Efficient Capture and Quantification of the
Airborne Fungal Pathogen Sclerotinia sclerotiorum Employing a Nanoelectrode-Activated Microwell Array
posted on 2021-12-27, 23:29authored byPedro
A. Duarte, Lukas Menze, Lian Shoute, Jie Zeng, Oleksandra Savchenko, Jingwei Lyu, Jie Chen
In this study, we
present a microdevice for the capture and quantification
of Sclerotinia sclerotiorum spores,
pathogenic agents of one of the most harmful infectious diseases of
crops, Sclerotinia stem rot. The early prognosis
of an outbreak is critical to avoid severe economic losses and can
be achieved by the detection of a small number of airborne spores.
However, the current lack of simple and effective methods to quantify
fungal airborne pathogens has hindered the development of an accurate
early warning system. We developed a device that remedies these limitations
based on a microfluidic design that contains a nanothick aluminum
electrode structure integrated with a picoliter well array for dielectrophoresis-driven
capture of spores and on-chip quantitative detection employing impedimetric
sensing. Based on experimental results, we demonstrated a highly efficient
spore trapping rate of more than 90% with an effective impedimetric
sensing method that allowed the spore quantification of each column
in the array and achieved a sensitivity of 2%/spore at 5 kHz and 1.6%/spore
at 20 kHz, enabling single spore detection. We envision that our device
will contribute to the development of a low-cost microfluidic platform
that could be integrated into an infectious plant disease forecasting
tool for crop protection.