Mass spectrometers have demonstrated that can identify biological species by their masses with very high precision (~Da) however they present a very limited dynamic range ((~MDa and can not be applied for the identification of big microorganisms such as viruses and bacterial cells This limitation can be overcome by the use of nanomechanical spectrometry, which has proved to discriminate these biological entities with very high precision by the determination of the mass of the biological analytes by measuring the resonance frequency shift of the micro and nanoresonators when these particles land on their surface Nanomechanical spectrometry has demonstrated its capacity by measuring the mass of IgM antibodies and bacteriophage T 5 capsids. Furthermore, this techniquehas shown the capacity to measure not only the mass of an Escherichia coli but also its stiffness precisely. In this work we show new results of mass and stiffness measurements of Staphylococcus epidermidis using nanomechanical spectrometry.

Trabajo presentado en el 16th International Workshop on Nanomechanical Sensing, celebrado en Lausanne (Suiza), del 19 al 21 de junio de 2019