CLEMSON, South Carolina – Clemson scientist Feng Ding will conduct a rapid COVID-1nine detection with the investment of a one-year RAPID grant from the National Science Foundation.
Ding said current COVID-1 nine checks require samples to be sent to a lab with a prospective waiting era of more than a day before patients get their results. Ding expects the $1nine0.06five grant and his paintings to Pengyu Chen, a Clemson alumnus and now an accessory professor at Auburn University in Alabama, to reposition the COVID-1nine check execution rate.
“The concept of this verification is to stumble upon the lines of viral protein with highly sensitive sensors activated through nanotechnology,” said Ding, associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the Faculty of Sciences. “And I hope scorridor will be able to do that on the site by temporarily analyzing the patient’s insufficiency in just 15 minutes.”
Ding and Chen plan to do this by developing a new nanomaterial-based sensor with the capability to detect virus proteins in real time. This project builds on prior research of riboswitches commonly used by single-cell organisms for gene regulation. When sensing metabolites or small molecules, a riboswitch can change its three-dimensional shape and subsequently turn on the “switch” of enzyme expression for unitizing the nutrient.
In this project, SARS-CoV-2 proteins can be targeted through computer-designed “riboswitches”, and nanophajons can be used to sign the replacement of the corresponding form in the presence of the virus. Additional testing of this specific virus-to-panic technique allows for rapid detection and isolation of COVID-1nine patients, a key to breaking the transmission chain directly to a more logical pandemic, as well as new prospective WAVES of SARS-CoV-2 after the reopening economy, Ding said.
They are in the early stages of their studies and plan to start verifying the procedure soon. The plan is then to make paints with doctors to verify genuine COVID-19 samples.
Ding said one of the pitfalls they’ll have to dress with is to do their checkup without using high-strength microscopes that would only be solved in state-of-the-art study labs. But they have a concept that they will also check as they paint to discover a faster verification option.
They are working with the design of alternate approaches, such as electrochemical detection, rather than optics, of changes in the shape of riboswitches when the virus is recognized. Ding stated that this speculation is still in development, but that ideally, the device capable of measuring electrochemical insufflation would be small and portable.
“We hope this verification technique can be an alternative to current verification techniques,” Ding said. “The concept is that this verification is immediate without the will of a beloved team.”