Carbon dots: Current advances in pathogenic bacteria monitoring and prospect applications

Pathogenic bacterial infections are a significant threat to human safety and health. Recent researches on the application of nanoparticles as imaging, detecting agents have evidenced their huge potential for infectious disease management. Among these nanoparticles, carbon dots (CDs) have attracted much attention as a new and innovative nanoparticle owing to their unique optical and physicochemical properties as well as their higher biosafety. Thus, CDs are becoming superior candidates for imaging and detection of pathogenic bacteria. This review provides an overview of research advances and the mechanisms in the imaging and detection pathogenic bacteria such as "switch on" sensor, "on-off" sensor, förster resonance energy transfer (FRET), etc. Further, our discussion extends to exploring the antibacterial effects of CDs, which is considered to be a potentially promising antibacterial agent. This review would provide the basis and the direction for the further commercial applications of CDs in imaging, detecting and eliminating pathogenic bacteria. The challenges associated with CDs in monitoring of pathogenic bacteria and future directions in this field are also presented.