Title:	Customized low-cost high-throughput amplifier for electro-fluidic detection of cell volume changes in point-of-care applications
Authors:	Kaushik, Saurabh Selvanathan, Prabhakaran Soni, G.V.
Issue Date:	20-Apr-2022
Publisher:	Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Citation:	PLoS ONE, 2022, Vol. 17, e0267207
Abstract:	Physical parameters of the pathogenic cells, like its volume, shape, and stiffness, are important biomarkers for diseases, chemical changes within the cell, and overall cell health. The response of pathogenic bacteria and viruses to different chemical disinfectants is studied widely. Some of the routinely employed techniques to measure these changes require elaborate and expensive equipment which limits any study to a non-mobile research lab facility. Recently, we showed a micropore-based electro-fluidic technique to have great promise in measuring subtle changes in cell volumes at high throughput and resolution. This method, however, requires commercial amplifiers, which makes this technique expensive and incompatible for in-field use. In this paper, we develop a home-built amplifier to make this technique in-field compatible and apply it to measure changes in bacterial volumes upon exposure to alcohol. First, we introduce our low-cost and portable transimpedance amplifier and characterize the maximum range, absolute error percentage, and RMS noise of the amplifier in the measured current signal, along with the amplifier’s bandwidth, and compared these characteristics with the commercial amplifiers. Using our home-built amplifier, we demonstrate a high throughput detection of ~1300 cells/second and resolve cell diameter changes down to 1 μm. Finally, we demonstrate measurement of cell volume changes in E. coli bacteria when exposed to ethanol (5% v/v), which is otherwise difficult to measure via imaging techniques. Our low-cost amplifier (~100-fold lower than commercial alternatives) is battery-run, completely portable for point-of-care applications, and the electro-fluidic devices are currently being tested for in-field applications.
Description:	Open Access - This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
URI:	http://hdl.handle.net/2289/7926
ISSN:	1932-6203 1932-6203(Online)
Alternative Location:	https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0267207
Copyright:	2022 The Author(s)
Appears in Collections:	Research Papers (SCM)

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