University of Georgia research team comprising Ralph Tripp and Jeremy Driskell have developed a new diagnostic method to identify influenza in minutes at a very low cost by measuring the scattering pattern of laser light by gold nanoparticles coated with antibodies that attach to only certain flu viral strains.
Ralph Tripp is the Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Vaccine Development in the UGA College of Veterinary Medicine
Driskell stated that biological molecules like viruses are basically weak light scatterers, while gold nanoparticles are highly efficient light scatterers. The combination of gold nanoparticles and the virus makes the scattered light to behave in a quantifiable and predictable pattern.
According to the researchers, the current method used to detect the presence of flu is a polymerase chain reaction, which can only be performed in highly sophisticated labs. The sample has to be incubated for three days to separate the DNA, which is then amplified multiple times. Thus, the whole process, from collection of samples to final results, requires at least one week and is expensive.
Driskell further said that another method is the lateral flow assay, which is comparatively inexpensive and can be utilized at the point-of-care. However, it cannot detect the particular viral strain and fails to notice up to 50% of viral infections. The researchers plan to evaluate the new diagnostic test with their alternative method that measures the frequency changes of the scattered laser light by viral RNA or DNA. Tripp plans to use the new technique in poultry farms to determine the salmonella levels in bath water.