By Jennifer Warner
　　Emerging technology may soon allow doctors to detect deadly viruses on the spot and alert military forces to biological warfare agents while on the battlefield. Researchers have developed a new technique for DNA testing that may prove more effective than current methods.

"This is a technique that is going to be simpler and faster than using the standard technique that we had to use to sequence the genes in the first place," says Henry Everitt, PhD, of the Army Research Office. Everitt says the findings, published in the September 8 issue of the journal Science, open up the possibility that soldiers could carry portable biological agent detectors that would set off a signal if a harmful agent like anthrax was in the area.

"In the Army, we're very anxious to see this technology demonstrated because of the real threat that we're facing from biological warfare agents," says Everitt.

The current method for DNA testing uses polymerase chain reaction or PCR techniques to duplicate DNA millions of times over in order to make the strains detectable by special fluorescence probes. In contrast, the new method uses a modified photographic solution and gold nanoparticle probes to magnify the actual signal strength of the DNA, making it detectable by a simple flatbed scanner.

"The same instrument that you use to scan documents into your laptop or desktop computer is used to actually read the chip and determine how much of the different DNA are there," says study author Chad Mirkin, PhD. Mirkin and his colleagues, Robert Letsinger and Andrew Taton, developed the new technique at Northwestern University.

Mirkin compares the new technique to increasing the intensity of a 10-watt light bulb to that of a 100,000-watt bulb, rather than creating many small bulbs to produce a similar effect, as with the duplication requirements of PCR testing.

Researchers say the new method, called scanometric DNA array detection, will also help bring DNA testing technology into the doctor's office by making the results easier to understand and requiring less expensive laboratory equipment.

"The bottom line is that you can create chips, we think, for clinical diagnostics and research purposes that are more accurate and give you better information for a fraction of the cost," says Mirkin.

Mirkin says a commercial company, Nanospheres, plans to have prototypes of the new device ready for testing in the next 12 to15 months. Researchers have already developed a prototype testing chips for tuberculosis and the biological warfare agent anthrax. They're currently working on one for a colon cancer gene and say as genetic information continues to emerge from the sequencing of the human genome, more and more diseases and agents will be detectable by the new technology.

The study was funded by the Army Research Office, the National Institutes of Health and Nanospheres, Inc.

　　(From Aol.com)