Use of Magnetic Nanoparticles to Isolate Anaerobic Bacteria

Objective: Anaerobic bacteria, which make up an important part of normal body flora, may lead to serious life-threatening infections. Since isolation and identification of anaerobic bacteria require time-consuming, sensitive, and difficult methods, they can only be performed in certain clinical laboratories. For this reason, diagnosis and treatment of anaerobic infections are delayed and drug resistance is observed due to empirical treatment. New methods that will enable the early identification of these bacteria will help reduce the duration of treatment and mortality rates due to anaerobic infections. Method: In this study, it is aimed to design magnetic nanoparticles attached to N-methyl-D-glucamine (Mag-NMDG) to catch anaerobic bacteria for rapid identification. Mag-NMDG nanoparticles were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), dynamic light scattering (DLS), and vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM). Results: Mag-NMDG nanoparticles were applied to gram positive and gram negative anaerobic bacteria such as Actinomyces odontolyticus, Prevotella buccae, Veillonella parvula, Bifidobacterium dentium and Bacteroides fragilis isolated from culture media. The binding of bacteria to Mag-NMDG was determined by microscope images, McFarland values, and MALDI-TOF MS identification scores. Conclusion: As a result of this study, it was concluded that the Mag-NMDG nanoparticles could be used to isolate anaerobic bacteria directly from samples. Thus, it is foreseen that many time-consuming and troublesome steps in the isolation and identification stages can be eliminated.