Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent-Based Adhesion Assays

Among the various adhesion assays that require some type of bacterial labeling to estimate the extent of bacterial adhesion to animal cells, the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA)-based system has been introduced as a convenient and sensitive means to enumerate adherent microorganisms. It is especially useful in systems employing animal cells immobilized on microtiter plates, such as tissue-culture cells and phagocytic cells, which tend to adhere naturally to plastic surfaces. Even cells in suspension can be immobilized on plastic surfaces either before or after performing the adhesion assay without affecting their ability to bind bacteria and at the same time retaining the same receptor specificity as that of the nonimmobilized cells. The chapter exemplifies a number of studies using ELISA-based systems to estimate adhesion of microorganisms to various substrata and describes an ELISA-based procedure for the enumeration of adhesion of type 1 fimbriated Klebsiella pneumoniae to mouse peritoneal macrophages in suspension.