RAPID CHEMILUMINESCENT SCREEN TEST FOR MICROORGANISMS

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DESCRIPTION: (Adapted from the applicant's abstract) Culture of urine is the usual method for diagnosis of bacteriuria in clinical microbiology laboratories. About 65 million urine specimens are tested by this method per year in the U.S. Each specimen is plated on two media in order to detect important gram positive and gram negative results. The goal of the proposed project is to develop a rapid screen test that will identify infected and uninfected urines. Then the cost for diagnosis of bacteriuria can be reduced because only infected urines will be cultured for isolation and characterization of the bacteria. Preliminary experiments have shown that energy from normal cell metabolism can be diverted into chemiluminescent emitted light which can be related to the presence of microorganisms. The research plan proposes to investigate the mechanism of the chemiluminescent reaction and optimize assay performance. The work will use lucigenin and luminol as chemiluminescent probes and will use redox active agents, such as paraquat, to transfer reducing equivalents from enzymes and cofactors to oxygen and the chemiluminescent probes. An important goal will be to achieve assay performance that will allow the method to be applied to the diagnosis of bacteriuria.