Antibiotic resistance is a global health threat. To combat against infections, we urgently need better strategies. Currently there are limited number of antibiotics in the treatment repertoire of existing bacterial infections. Among them rifampicin is a broad-spectrum antibiotic against various bacterial pathogens. Efficacy of rifampicin decreases by time due to appearance of rifampicin persister or resistant phenotypes in the population. To benefit more from rifampicin, its current standard dosage might be reconsidered and deeply explored using both computational tools and experimental or clinical studies. In this study, we present the mathematical relationship between the concentration of rifampicin and the growth and killing kinetics of Escherichia coli cells. We generated time-killing curves of Escherichia coli cells in the presence of 4 µg/ml, 16 µg/ml, and 32 µg/ml rifampicin exposures. We fitted time-killing curve data using the lsqcurvefit function in MATLAB to model rifampicin responses of Escherichia coli cells.

Glioblastoma multiforme is the most aggressive malignant primary brain tumor. We need to better understand its microenvironment to design effective treatment strategies. Hence, characterization of glioma cells while providing their genetic and phenotypic stability is crucial. Here, we used dielectrophoresis (DEP) to underline the deformational heterogeneity of U87 glioma cell line. We fabricated a gold microelectrode array within a microfluidic channel and applied 3 V pp and 30 kHz to 10 MHz frequencies to generate DEP forces. We analyzed dielectrophoretic movement and deformation of 100 glioma cells. We observed that U87 glioma cells exhibited crossover frequency around 100 kHz - 200 kHz. The mean dielectrophoretic displacements of glioma cells were significantly different at varying frequencies with the maximum and minimum travel distances of 13.22 µm and 1.37 µm, respectively. The dielectrophoretic deformation indexes of U87 glioma cells altered between 0.027 – 0.040. It was 0.036 in the absence of dielectrophoretic forces. When we applied 3 V pp and 30 kHz to 10 MHz frequencies, the mean deformation indexes of the glioma cells did not significantly vary between 30 kHz - 500 kHz. The mean value of the deformation index was 0.028 under the influences of strong positive DEP forces when 500 kHz to 10 MHz were applied.

Transition of rapid, ready-to-use, and low-cost nucleic acid-based detection technologies from laboratories to points of sample collection has drastically accelerated. However, most of these approaches are still incapable of diagnosis starting from sampling, through nucleic acid isolation and detection in the field. Here, we developed a simple, portable, low-cost, colorimetric, and remotely controllable platform for reliable, high-throughput, and rapid diagnosis using loop mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) assays. It consists of a thermally isolated cup, low-cost electronic components, a polydimethylsiloxane sample well, and a fast prototyped case that covers electronic components. The steady-state temperature error of the system is less than 1%. We performed LAMP, Colony-LAMP, and Colony PCR reactions using the yaiO2 primer set for Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa samples at 65˚C and 30 min. We detected the end-point colorimetric readouts by the naked eye under day light. We confirmed the specificity and sensitivity of our approach using pure genomic DNA and crude bacterial colonies. We benchmarked our Colony-LAMP detection against Colony PCR. The number of samples tested can easily be modified for higher throughput in our system. We strongly believe that our platform can greatly contribute rapid and reliable diagnosis in versatile operational environments.