The use of cationic surfactants and ionic liquids in the detection of microbial contamination by capillary electrophoresis.

A rapid test of whether a laboratory sample contains any microorganisms is important and necessary for many areas of science and technology. Currently, most of the standard procedures for the detection of aerobic bacteria, anaerobic bacteria and fungi, require the preparation of microbial cultures in respective growth media, which are dramatically slow. Different approaches providing fast analysis such as CE are becoming more desired. To compensate for the natural electrophoretic heterogeneity of microbes, various buffer additives were examined to stack all bacteria and fungi in a sample plug into a single peak. This peak was removed from the molecular contaminants in the sample to prevent false positives. Both cationic surfactants and ionic liquids (IL) were investigated as run buffer additives and they are both widely applicable to different species of bacteria and fungi. Given that high concentrations of surfactants can potentially lyse cells, dicationic IL offer attractive auxiliary buffer additives for use in CE-based sterility tests. The analysis can be completed in 10 min, thus providing a great advantage over traditional direct inoculation methods that require several weeks to complete.