The CheckLite™ 250 Plus portable bioluminescence assay system for measuring bacterial adenosine 5'-triphosphate (ATP) was investigated for its performance with respect to the field detection of bacteria in bioterrorism incidents. Vegetative bacteria,
Escherichia coli (
E. coli),
Bacillus subtilis (
B. subtilis),
Staphylococcus aureus, and
Yersinia pseudotuberculosis gave considerably high luminescence in a dose-dependent manner with responses of 10
4-10
5 relative light units (RLU) per 10
7 cells, whereas spore forms of
B. subtilis showed considerably low luminescence with 214 RLU per 10
9 spores. Typical white powder materials such as wheat flour, sugar, and bovine serum albumin at concentrations of 0.1 and 0.5% (w/v) gave only negligible luminescence (lower than 400 RLU), and did not change the luminescence of
E. coli cells significantly (42-102% of the control). The luminescence of
B. subtilis spores increased considerably to over 10
4 RLU per 10
7 spores by pretreatment consisting of 37°C incubation for 30 min in nutrient broth medium containing 4 mM L-alanine. The increased luminescence by this pretreatment was not changed considerably (42-145% of the control) in the presence of the above tested white powder materials (0.1 and 0.5%).
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