Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) in Microbiology: Illumination and Enhancement of the Microbial World

The microbial world forms a huge family of organisms that exhibit the greatest phylogenetic diversity on Earth and thus colonize virtually our entire planet. Due to this diversity and subsequent complex interactions, the vast majority of microorganisms are involved in innumerable natural bioprocesses and contribute an absolutely vital role toward the maintenance of life on Earth, whilst a small minority cause various infectious diseases. The ever-increasing demand for environmental monitoring, sustainable ecosystems, food security, and improved healthcare systems drives the continuous search for inexpensive but reproducible, automated and portable techniques for detection of microbial isolates and understanding their interactions for clinical, environmental, and industrial applications and benefits. Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is attracting significant attention for the accurate identification, discrimination and characterization and functional assessment of microbial cells at the single cell level. In this review, we briefly discuss the technological advances in Raman and Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) instrumentation and their application for the analysis of clinically and industrially relevant microorganisms, biofilms, and biological warfare agents. In addition, we summarize the current trends and future prospects of integrating Raman/SERS-isotopic labeling and cell sorting technologies in parallel, to link genotype-to-phenotype in order to define community function of unculturable microbial cells in mixed microbial communities which possess admirable traits such as detoxification of pollutants and recycling of essential metals.