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A microtitre plate‐based assay for the screening of β‐lactams
Author(s) -
Quesada A.R.,
Cañedo A.,
Moreno M.A.,
FernándezPuentes J.L.
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
letters in applied microbiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.698
H-Index - 110
eISSN - 1472-765X
pISSN - 0266-8254
DOI - 10.1111/j.1472-765x.1996.tb01166.x
Subject(s) - antibiotics , chromogenic , microbiology and biotechnology , bacteria , enzyme , biology , substrate (aquarium) , biochemistry , chemistry , chromatography , ecology , genetics
A.R. QUESADA, A. CAÑEDO, M.A. MORENO AND J.L. FERNÁNDEZ‐PUENTES. 1996. A simple, rapid, sensitive and automatizable method for the detection and quantification of bacterial cell wall inhibitors has been developed. The procedure is characterized by the use of a micro‐organism hypersensitive to β‐lactam antibiotics that contains an inducible cytosolic β‐galactosidase; this enzyme is released when the micro‐organism cell wall is disrupted by the antibiotic action, and then measured by the use of a chromogenic substrate. The present method allows the detection of β‐lactam traces in other non‐β‐lactam antibiotics, and has been successfully applied in the detection of small amounts of β‐lactams in biological fluids such as milk and Actinomycetes fermentation broths. The easy automatization of this method makes it specially suitable for the screening of new antibiotics of natural origin.