High-efficiency optoelectronic system for monitoring of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in bacteria

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is the ability of bacteria to become immune to antimicrobial treatments and it is going to become the main cause of death in the next decades. The diagnostic techniques usually used to define the most suitable antibiotics require long time delay and also provide a resolution that is not suitable to detect multibacterial diseases. Here, we propose an optoelectronic approach for the analysis and monitoring of susceptibility and activity at the single-bacteria level. The system is realized by an array of optical tweezers for trapping of individual bacteria with high stability and trapping time of few hours, so enabling the monitoring of bacteria metabolism during the antibiotics action. We predict a high electrical detection resolution with a current variation by up to a factor 12 between dead and live bacteria allowing a real-time, reusable, label-free and non-destructive analysis on a very compact footprint, making the method suitable for on-chip integration and eventual incorporation into hand-held medical instruments.