Figure 5. Diagnosis of clinical samples.

Detection of pathogens by the magneto-DNA nanoparticle system using universal (a), and specific (c) probes for each bacteria type. b, Heatmap of obtained ΔR₂ values for universal and specific detection. Clinical specimens (300 μl for each sample) were processed to extract total RNA. This was followed by asymmetric RT-PCR (35 cycles) with universal and specific primers for all bacterial types. The PCR products (equivalent to 0.3 μl volume of sample) were magnetically labeled and detected by μNMR. a, Two of the 9 clinical samples tested negative, which correlated well with standard culture results. The other 7 samples were positive. ND represents samples with no pathogens detected. c, Identification of pathogen types within each sample. Note that some samples were infected with more than one pathogen, and the identified bacterial types correlated well with standard culture (see also Supplementary Table S3). Data are expressed as mean ± SD. All samples for the assay were prepared in triplicate.