Gold Nanoflower-Enhanced Dynamic Light Scattering Immunosensor for the Ultrasensitive No-Wash Detection of Escherichia coli O157:H7 in Milk

Gold nanoflowers (GNFs) exhibit stronger light scattering ability than gold nanospheres (GNSs) with the same diameter, thereby contributing to enhancing the sensitivity of the scattering-based sensing method. However, the application of GNFs in biosensors based on dynamic light scattering (DLS) has not been yet reported. Herein, we describe for the first time an improved no-wash immunosensor based on dynamic light scattering for the detection of Escherichia coli O157:H7 (E. coli O157:H7) in milk using GNFs for sensitive signal transduction. To achieve this goal, a thiolated amphiphilic carboxyl ligand was introduced to modify the GNF surface and improve solution stability and antibody functionalization. Several key factors that affect the detection sensitivity of our developed GNF_DLS immunosensor were systematically investigated. Under the optimal conditions, our proposed GNF_DLS immunosensor provided an excellent linear detection for E. coli O157:H7 within the range from 6 × 100 to 6 × 104 colony-formin...