Identification of living Legionella using specific metabolic lipopolysaccharides
Thursday, January 23, 2014 - 09:50
in Biology & Nature
(Phys.org) —The bacterium that causes Legionnaires' disease remains difficult to track. French researchers have now developed a new technique that should allow living representatives of this dangerous pathogen to be detected much more quickly than with conventional methods. As they report in the journal Angewandte Chemie, samples are exposed to an azide-modified compound that the pathogen specifically incorporates into its shell, which is made of saccharide units. A fluorescent marker attached to the azide groups is used to identify the pathogen.