The Influence of Paper Surface Chemistry on Bacteriophage Activity

Abstract

Bacteriophages are promising biosensing systems in bioactive paper application due to their specific detection of bacteria. Different chemicals including wet strength resins were used to improve paper properties. This work investigated the influence of wet strength resins (PAE and PVAm) on bacteriophage activity, and proposed another method of using Poly NIP AM microgel to separate bacteriophage from paper surface. Compared with filter paper, the cationic polymer PAE and PVAm treated paper exhibited high phage binding efficiency but low phage activity due to the electrostatic interaction. PVAm had strong phage adsorption and almost completely deactivated the phage particle. Streptavidin was coupled to PolyNIPAM microgel in the presence of EDC, and T4 bacteriophage genetically modified with biotin was immobilized to microgel particle which resulted in a 10-fold improvement in attachment when compared with T4 wild-type phage. The microgel-phage coupling efficiency was very low, there were more than 10^6 micro gel particle for every active phage. And micro gel supported phages were deactivated after coating on the PAE/PVAm treated paper.