Hulya Yilmaz

An Evaluation of Surface-Enhanced Vibrational Spectroscopic Techniques for Microorganism Discrimination
Sabanci University // Istanbul, Turkey

Q&A Session III // Friday, October 30 // 8.15 am – 9 am (CET)

The detection, characterization and identification of microorganisms using surface-enhanced vibrational scattering (SEVS) spectroscopy including surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) and surface-enhanced infrared scattering (SEIRS) are attracting considerable research attention due to their potential to provide rich intrinsic molecular information from molecules and molecular structures in a close proximity of nanostructured noble metal surfaces. These techniques can allow rapid microbial characterization with a minimal sample preparation step. In this study, SERS and SEIRS were comparatively evaluated for the discrimination and identification of Candida Albicans (C. A.), Escherichia Coli (E. C.) and Staphylococcus Aureus (S. A.) using the citrate reduced colloidal silver nanoparticle (AgNPs) as substrates. The results showed that the SEIRS provides more accurate identification compared to FTIR. Similar to SERS experiments, a simple mixing of microorganism samples with colloidal AgNPs was satisfactory for SEIR experiments. This study suggests that SEIRS can be a potential technique for microbial analysis.   

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