- (HealthScoutNews) -- Dust-sized silicon chips that can
rapidly detect biological and chemical agents have been developed by University
of California, San Diego scientists.
-
- The substances the chips are able to identify include
those that can be dissolved in drinking water or sprayed into the air during
a bioterrorist attack.
-
- The research appears today in an advance online publication
of the Oct. 1 issue of the journal Nature Materials.
-
- The chips have "bar codes" that react to specific
chemical or biological agents.
-
- "The idea is that you can have something that's
as small as a piece of dust with some intelligence built into it, so that
it could be inconspicuously stuck to paint on a wall or to the side of
a truck or dispersed into a cloud of gas to detect toxic chemicals or biological
materials," says researcher Michael J. Sailor, a professor of chemistry
and biochemistry at UCSD.
-
- "When the dust recognizes what kinds of chemicals
or biological agents are present, that information can be read like a series
of bar codes by a laser that's similar to a grocery store scanner to tell
us if the cloud that's coming toward us is filled with anthrax bacteria
or if the tank of drinking water into which we've sprinkled the dust is
toxic," Sailor says.
-
- The chips also have many potential commercial uses in
research and medicine, the UCSD scientists say. They include biochemical
assays, screening chemicals for potential new drugs, or testing for toxic
materials.
-
- More information
-
- For more on bioterrorism preparedness, visit this <http://www.bt.cdc.gov/>Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention Web site.
-
-
-
- http://www.healthscout.com/template.asp?ap=43&page=newsDetail&id=508856
|
