Diagnosing and discovering new virus’ is about to get a whole lot easier thanks to a new development from Joseph DeRisi and Dave Wang. The molecular biologist and biochemists have developed a a glass slide which stores the DNA fragments of every virus ever recorded – all 22,000 of them. The ‘ViroChip’ will greatly reduce diagnosis time and assist researchers in identifying existing and new viral strains. DeRisi explains the particular benefit of the chip during viral epidemics;
We knew that it had always been a laborious and time-consuming effort. When an epidemic struck, what researchers generally did was go to electron microscopes and try to figure out what they were seeing. Sometimes, it took 10, 20 years to find a virus they knew had to be in there.
DNA and RNA are taken from infected patients and tagged using a fluorescent dye. The material is then placed on the chip, where researchers wait for matching sequences to ’stick together’. If all goes well, the resulting double helix match will glow, and signify diagnosis. The chip can also recognize evolved virus’ by identifying leftover genome segments from original viral strains.
[via The New York Times]
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