ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Microbiotechnology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1592471
Flow cytometry study of Escherichia coli treated with plasma-activated water: confirming the absence of the viable but non-culturable state in bacteria
Provisionally accepted
- Swiss Plasma Center, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, Lausanne, Geneva, Switzerland
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Plasma-activated water (PAW) is an emerging antimicrobial agent with promising applications in bacterial inactivation. The PAW samples are generated by non-contact exposure of deionized water to a surface dielectric barrier discharge plasma and are characterized by a reactive nitrogen species-rich chemistry. In this work, fluorescence flow cytometry is applied to assess the viability of Escherichia coli treated with PAW. The results indicate that PAW exhibits a strong bactericidal effect, significantly increasing propidium iodide positive populations and leading to cell shrinkage.Comparative colony-forming unit counting confirmed these findings, showing agreement between both techniques and ruling out the possibility of a viable but non-culturable (VBNC) bacteria state.These results underscore the potential of the PAW samples produced with the present setup for safe decontamination applications, while also offering insights into the mechanisms of bacterial inactivation.
Keywords: plasma-activated water (PAW), Low-temperature plasmas (LTPs), Flow Cytometry, live/dead BacLight PI/SYTO9 staining, Viable but non-culturable bacteria
Received: 13 Mar 2025; Accepted: 12 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Agus, Avino, Lavrikova, Myers and Furno. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Rita Agus, Swiss Plasma Center, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, Lausanne, Geneva, Switzerland
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.