News Excerpt:
A new light-based tool could cut the cost of spotting viral infections.
More about the news:
Recently, researchers from Harvard University, Cambridge, and Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, reported developing a tool that can detect if cells have been infected by a virus using only light and some knowledge of high-school physics.
About the tool:
- Reason for invention: Viruses can infect plants, animals, and humans, potentially leading to pandemics like COVID-19. To prevent such outbreaks, public health experts recommend the 'One Health' approach, which involves monitoring and safeguarding the health of plants, animals, the environment, and humans together.
- Process involved:
- The researchers behind the new study translated these cellular changes into patterns that could be used to say if a cell had been infected.
- They infected cells from a pig’s testicles with pseudorabies virus, shone light on them through a microscope, and tracked how changes in the cells distorted the light.
- The researchers recorded these distortions at different points of time so that the light data mimicked a progressing viral infection. Then they compared these distortions with those in light that had been shone through healthy cells.
- They finally reported that the difference between the two light patterns represented a ‘fingerprint’ of virus-infected cells.
Reasoning behind the process:
- The distortion in question referred to diffraction patterns.
- Diffraction is the tendency of light waves to spread out after they pass through narrow openings or around small objects.
- The method can differentiate between uninfected, virus-infected, and dead cells. Virus-infected cells were elongated and had more clear boundaries than uninfected cells.
Advantages of the tool:
- Accuracy: After comparing the current methods to detect virus infections with this new light-based technique, it was concluded that it could detect viral infections as accurately or even more accurately than the standard method.
- Cost-effectiveness: It is cheaper than the standard, while the equipment cost for the standard method using chemical reagents is about $3,000 (Rs 2.5 lakh), the cost of the new method described in this paper was about a tenth.
- Time effective: It takes only about two hours to detect virus-infected cells, against the 40 hours the current standard requires.
Conclusion:
The invention of this light-based tool for detecting viral infections seems promising, offering a cost-effective and efficient alternative to current methods. Its ability to accurately differentiate between infected and uninfected cells in a shorter time frame is commendable. Embracing such technological advancements could significantly enhance our ability to detect and respond to viral outbreaks swiftly, ultimately contributing to better public health outcomes.
