Abstract
This work focuses on the development nucleic acid sensing strategies for the detection of different pathogens. Foodborne bacterial contamination has continued to increase in recent years, creating a worsening public health threat. This has created a need for improvements in detection. Current accepted methodologies are often time-consuming, laborious, and expensive. As such attentions have shifted to on-site detection – however these methods still require improvement in their sensitivities and run time. Two field-deployable assays were developed targeting foodborne pathogens that do not require advanced personnel or fancy equipment to run. Both assays have the needed sensitivities and a reduction in sample to answer time when compared to gold standard and other existing techniques. It is important to also consider alternative materials for sensing applications. New materials and approaches help pave the progress in the field of biosensing and have reaching impacts in biomedical and analytical applications. More specifically, in the field of molecular aptamer beacons and stem loop probes there are many materials that are employed for signal generation and for quenching. However, some of these materials can be environmentally unfriendly or require complex chemistry and steps to be used in sensing platforms. One alternative quencher we explored is graphene oxide, which has already seen use in many biomedical and sensing applications.Together these projects work towards a broader goal of optimizing these nucleic acid-based systems for their desired end goal. This is achieved by the improvement in sensitivity, specificity, cost, and time. These optimization parameters are important not just in on-site detection but in laboratory-based systems as well.