Rapid detection of pathogens using lyotropic liquid crystals

Abstract

Lyotropic liquid crystals play an important role in many biological environments, such as micelles, liposomes, and phospholipid bilayers of cell membranes. In this work, we explore the performance of lyotropic liquid crystals as biosensors for macromolecules, proteins and whole microorganisms in hydrophilic media, i.e., the natural media where these specimens exist. The aim is to detect specific targets employing simple, unpowered sensors that can be used in the field, with minimum additional equipment. A number of different structures have been explored. The novelty in this work is the inclusion of a new optical effect, flow enhanced amplification, that allows for the semiquantitative detection of microscopic targets in lyotropic liquid crystal cells using the naked eye only.