ABSTRACT
Infectious diseases have always been a major obstacle to human development and welfare, causing millions of illnesses and deaths in both developing and developed countries with a substantial economic loss. In the modern age of globalization, the massive increase in world population, international travel, and trade has greatly facilitated their spread from one part of the world to other areas. Mankind needs to protect itself against the pathogenic microorganisms they come across in daily life as well as from the horrifying effects of bioterrorism agents. Prevention strategies against infectious agents require reliable, rapid, and accurate detection and identication of causative agents with highest sensitivity, which should be equally available in different parts of the globe, regardless of their economic conditions. Similarly, rapid and early diagnosis of infectious diseases has always remained indispensable for their prompt cure and management, which has stimulated scientists to develop highly sophisticated techniques over centuries and the efforts continue unabated. Conventional microbiological diagnostic techniques such as microscopy, cultural characteristics, biochemical testing, and serology, although reliable, are time consuming, tedious, expensive, less sensitive, and unsuitable for eld situations. Nanodiagnostic assays have emerged as a better alternative for early, sensitive, point-of-care, and cost-effective detection of microbial agents. There has been an explosive multidisciplinary research in nanodiagnostics in the last two decades yielding highly fascinating results. This chapter discusses some of the advancements made in the eld of nanotechnology-based assays for microbial detection along with providing the basic understanding.
