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A Rapid and Sensitive Approach to Detecting SARS-CoV-2
Gold Nanoparticles Enable Rapid SARS-CoV-2 Detection and Inhibition
There is a race in this pandemic to develop new technologies to detect SAR-CoV-2 virus and defeat its spread as quickly as possible. A bright light in this race recently appeared in a new paper published by
Nanoscale Advances that describes a simple, incredibly sensitive assay for the detection of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. (Pramanik et al., 2021).
A collaboration of researchers from Jackson State University and The University of Mississippi Medical Center created nanoparticles of gold attached to 4-aminothiophenol via an Au-S bond. In turn, these nanoparticles were functionalized by coating the gold beads with anti-spike antibodies, creating Ramen-based “biosensors” for SARS-CoV-2. In theory, the aggregation of the particles on the surface of a virus should produce a characteristic change in what is known as “Surface Enhanced Raman
The elusive area postrema
Nausea is a sense of malaise that all of us know. The sensation can be so overpowering that it leads us to wonder how and why this wretched condition happens. Researchers in Stephen Liberles’ lab at Harvard Medical School did more than wonder. They took the time and applied their expertise to study the neurons and circuits in the brain that control nausea, and reported their findings just in time for Thanksgiving. Deep in the brainstem, on the floor of the fourth ventricle lies the area postrema. A wide variety of evidence suggests that this region of the brain must be involved in nausea. Importantly, there is no blood brain barrier between the cells of the area postrema and the circulating plasma, so these cells are perfectly positioned to sample circulating poisons that most neurons would never encounter. However, the area postrema lies in a very specialized part of the brain which is very difficult to access experimentally.