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Thursday, 8th March 2007 (9140 views)

Gold nanotechnology has some well-publicised medical applications but perhaps less well known is its use in efforts to detect biological threats.

New and deadly infectious diseases and the possibility of biological warfare becoming a tactic of terrorists means that nanowires built from gold have become indispensable in the fight to detect pathogens.

Jeffrey Tok, who researches gold's use at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, said: "The ability to miniaturise and adapt traditional protocols to a fully automated nano-fluidic chip holds tremendous promise to enable multiplex, efficient, cost-effective and accurate pathogen sensing systems for bio defence applications."

Precious metals including gold, silver and nickel are able to replicate a barcode and thus detect pathogens like anthrax, small pox, ricin and botulinum toxins.

And a great advantage of using gold in these biological warfare detection schemes is that the barcoded antibodies can be reused over and over again because they are mixed together in an assay buffer liquid.

The laboratory is now looking at developing a portable bio sensing system in conjunction with researchers from Stanford University.

 

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