A tiny, four-fingered 'hand' folded from a single piece of DNA can pick up the virus that causes COVID-19 for highly sensitive rapid detection and can even block viral particles from entering cells to infect them, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers report.
University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignNov 27 2024 A tiny, four-fingered "hand" folded from a single piece of DNA can pick up the virus that causes COVID-19 for highly sensitive rapid detection and can even block viral particles from entering cells to infect them, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers report.
"We wanted to make a soft material, nanoscale robot with grabbing functions that never have been seen before, to interact with cells, viruses and other molecules for biomedical applications," Wang said. "We are using DNA for its structural properties. It is strong, flexible and programmable. Yet even in the DNA origami field, this is novel in terms of the design principle.
"Our test is very fast and simple since we detect the intact virus directly," Cunningham said. "When the virus is held in the NanoGripper's hand, a fluorescent molecule is triggered to release light when illuminated by an LED or laser. When a large number of fluorescent molecules are concentrated upon a single virus, it becomes bright enough in our detection system to count each virus individually.
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