Engineers identified an optical signature in a widely used class of magnetic 'Dynabeads' that could be used to quickly detect contaminants in food, water, or the human body.
Getting results from a blood test can take anywhere from one day to a week, depending on what a test is targeting. The same goes for tests of water pollution and food contamination. And in most cases, the wait time has to do with time-consuming steps in sample processing and analysis.
The researchers found that Dynabeads have an unusually strong Raman signature that can be easily detected, much like a fluorescent tag. This signature, they found, can act as a"reporter." If detected, the signal can serve as a quick confirmation, within less than an hour, that a target pathogen is indeed present in a given sample.
Both Karnik and Tadesse's labs have independently been developing techniques to speed up various parts of the pathogen testing process and make the process portable, using Dynabeads. "We were initially seeking to identify the signatures of bacteria, but the signature of the Dynabeads was actually very strong," Tadesse says."We realized this signal could be a means of reporting to you whether you have that bacteria or not."As a practical demonstration, the researchers mixed Dynabeads into vials of water contaminated with.
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