Traditional bacterial identification methods based on cultivation require significant time, which substantially limits their operational efficiency. This paper proposes a rapid and simple method for the quantification of S. aureus 209p and E. coli K12 bacterial cells based on indirect SERS spectroscopy using gold nanostar and nanorod tags conjugated with the 4- nitrothiophenol reporter molecule. The dependence of the SERS signal on the number of nanoparticle- labeled bacterial cells was investigated. The developed method for estimating bacterial cell count demonstrated good performance both for the direct measurement of the signal from the freshly prepared complex and for measuring the signal from the pellet after centrifugation. The most statistically significant results were obtained using gold nanostars under direct, pellet- free measurement conditions of the SERS signal from the bacteria complex.
Burov et al. (Wed,) studied this question.