Fabrication of carbohydrate-conjugated fingerprintlike mesoporous silica net for the targeted capture of bacteria

Herein, a rapid, straightforward, reliable, and low-cost strategy for targeted capture and detection of bacteria using carbohydrate-conjugated mesoporous silica structure was developed. Fingerprint-like mesoporous silica net (FMSN) with well-defined three-dimensional architecture and ordered morphology was first facilely synthesized by the aid of tetrabutylammonium iodine (TBAI) as cotemplates with cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB). When conjugated with maltoheptaose as targeting moiety, FMSN showed efficient and selective capturing capability of Staphylococcus epidermidis. This new and unique platform for capturing S. epidermidis is fast (within 18 min), high efficiency (greater than 98.6% from 1 × 10³ CFU/mL to 1 × 10⁸ CFU/mL), specific (compared to M. smegmatis mc² 155), and reusable (6 cycles).