Introducing a bioelectrochemical method for highly selective enumeration of magnetotactic bacteria

In this study, we employed an electrochemical (potentiometric) method to enumerate magnetotactic bacteria (MTB) during its coupling with iodometric titration to obtain a selective, precise and rapid counting system. Oxygen was considered as an important factor for the orientation and movement of MTB towards the magnet-modified indicator electrode. In the direct potentiometry, a linear correlation was detected between potentiometric response and dissolved oxygen (DO) concentrations. By the increase of the DO concentration, potential difference would increase in the range of 4.0 to 20.0 parts per million (ppm) at different pressure conditions. The reliability of the O(2) bio-sensing feature provides a selective MTB-based cell enumeration methodology based on indirect potentiometric titration. Furthermore, a five-minute H(2)-purging resulted in an increase of potentiometric response sensitivity arising from the decrease in DO concentration of the electrolyte solution. Results were also investigated by zeta potential difference, which show the effect of charge density of MTB in presence of DO. Zeta potential was increased proportionally by addition of the MTB population. Regarding the reliability of the suggested method, data obtained by the designed system showed no statistical difference from those obtained by the most common procedure in microbiology for enumeration of bacteria, known as colony forming unit (CFU) method.