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Thursday August 30 6:32 PM ET

Researchers Use Quartz Crystals to 'Hear' Viruses

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - For years doctors have used stethoscopes to hear

the heart beating, but one day they may be able to listen for sounds of viral

infections, according to a report from the UK.

 

The listening technology is rapid and accurate and should be relatively cheap

to develop, the study's authors explain.

 

Dr. Matthew A. Cooper and colleagues at the University of Cambridge, UK,

based their detection method on quartz crystals. These crystals vibrate when

exposed to an electric field. As the electric field strengthens, the

vibrations increase. The vibrations grow even stronger when an additional

mass is attached to the crystals.

 

Cooper's team coated quartz crystals with an antibody that attracts a type of

herpes virus. Once viruses attached to the quartz, the researchers increased

the intensity of the electric field. The goal of the intensification was to

trigger the virus to break free from the quartz.

 

Using the quartz as a miniature microphone, the researchers were able to hear

the sounds produced as viruses broke away from the quartz. In fact, they were

able to tell from the sound how many viruses were present. The technique,

known as rupture event scanning, was so sensitive that it could tell whether

only a single virus was present.

 

``We present data that show it is possible to directly, sensitively and

quantitatively detect a human virus, herpes simplex virus, using rupture

event scanning,'' Cooper and his colleagues write in the September issue of

the journal Nature Biotechnology.

 

Cooper's team is in the process of simplifying their virus detector to make

it a portable technology. The researchers predict that the listening

technique eventually may be used to provide instant diagnosis in the clinic.

 

Quartz-based listening technology seems to be ``a useful addition'' to

existing detection techniques, since it appears to be both accurate and fast,

according to Erica Ollmann Saphire and Paul W.H.I. Parren, of The Scripps

Research Institute in La Jolla, California.

 

In an accompanying editorial, they point out that quartz technology has been

mass-produced cheaply for years, so developing the listening technology

should be feasible.

 

``Such a development,'' they conclude, ``could be of great benefit to areas

where sensitive techniques to diagnose viral infections are currently

unavailable.''

 

SOURCE: Nature Biotechnology 2001;19:823-824, 833-837.

 

 

 

 

 

*~~*~~*~~ Linda in Florida ~~*~~*~~*

The grass isn't greener on the other side...It's greener where you water it!

;o)

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