Enlargement of Gold Nanoparticles for Sensitive Immunochromatographic Diagnostics of Potato Brown Rot

摘要： Lateral ?ow immunoassay (LFIA) is a convenient tool for rapid ?eld-based control of various bacterial targets. However, for many applications, the detection limits obtained by LFIA are not suf?cient. In this paper, we propose enlarging gold nanoparticles’ (GNPs) size to develop a sensitive lateral ?ow immunoassay to detect Ralstonia solanacearum. This bacterium is a quarantine organism that causes potato brown rot. We fabricated lateral ?ow test strips using gold nanoparticles (17.4 ± 1.0 nm) as a label and their conjugates with antibodies speci?c to R. solanacearum. We proposed a signal enhancement in the test strips’ test zone due to the tetrachloroauric (III) anion reduction on the GNP surface, and the increase in size of the gold nanoparticles on the test strips was approximately up to 100 nm, as con?rmed by scanning electron microscopy. Overall, the gold enhancement approach decreased the detection limit of R. solanacearum by 33 times, to as low as 3 × 104 cells·mL–1 in the potato tuber extract. The achieved detection limit allows the diagnosis of latent infection in potato tubers. The developed approach based on gold enhancement does not complicate analyses and requires only 3 min. The developed assay together with the sample preparation and gold enlargement requires 15 min. Thus, the developed approach is promising for the development of lateral ?ow test strips and their subsequent introduction into diagnostic practice.