Sensing Water-Borne Pathogens by Intrinsic Fluorescence

We investigated the feasibility of using intrinsic fluorescence of waterborne contaminants as a detection strategy. Four common pathogens, Escherichia coli, Enterococcus faecalis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Salmonella typhimurium, were cultured under controlled conditions; each sample was then diluted in a buffer solution, and analyzed for intrinsic fluorescence. Despite the findings reported in the literature, the experiments on the above four bacteria revealed very little difference in the emission spectra. Nevertheless, multivariate analysis of the emission data was able to classify the four species.