Separation of methicillin-resistant from methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus by electrophoretic methods in fused silica capillaries etched with supercritical water.

Identification and prevention of Staphylococcus aureus-caused infections may benefit from a fast and dependable method to distinguish between the methicillin-resistant (MRSA) and methicillin-susceptible (MSSA) S. aureus strains. The current methods involving polymerase chain reaction and/or other molecular tests are usually laborious and time-consuming. We describe here a fast and low-cost method employing capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) to distinguish between MRSA and MSSA. The method makes use of a supercritical water-treated fused silica capillary, the inner surface of which has subsequently been modified with (3-glycidyloxypropyl)trimethoxysilane. With optimized proportions of suitable additives to the background electrolyte, a CZE separation of MRSA from MSSA may be completed within 12 min. The cells were baseline-resolved, and resolution was determined to be 3.61. The isoelectric points of MSSA and MRSA were found to be the same for both groups of these strains, pI = 3.4.