“Our system is convenient, and it is cheap to make”
Some may think of turkeys as good for just lunch meat and holiday meals, but bioengineers at UC Berkeley saw inspiration in the big birds for a new type of biosensor that changes color when exposed to chemical vapors. This feature makes the sensors valuable detectors of toxins or airborne pathogens.
Turkey skin, it turns out, can shift from red to blue to white, thanks to bundles of collagen that are interspersed with a dense array of blood vessels. It is this color-shifting characteristic that gives turkeys the name “seven-faced birds” in Japanese and Korean.
The researchers say that spacing between the collagen fibers changes when the blood vessels swell or contract, depending upon whether the bird is excited or angry. The amount of swelling changes the way light waves are scattered and, in turn, alters the colors we see on the bird’s head.
Seung-Wuk Lee, UC Berkeley associate professor of bioengineering, led a research team in mimicking this color-changing ability to create biosensors that can detect volatile chemicals.
“In our lab, we study how light is generated and changes in nature, and then we use what we learn to engineer novel devices,” said Lee, who is also a faculty scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The researchers created a mobile app, the iColour Analyser, to show that a smartphone photo of the sensor’s color bands could be used to help identify chemicals of interest, such as vapor of the explosive TNT. They described their experiments in a study published today (Tuesday, Jan. 21) in the journal Nature Communications.
Sensors that give off color readings are easier to use and read than conventional biosensors. However, the major color-based sensors in development elsewhere can only detect a limited range of chemicals and, according to the researchers, they can be very difficult to manufacture.
“Our system is convenient, and it is cheap to make,” said Lee. “We also showed that this technology can be adapted so that smartphones can help analyze the color fingerprint of the target chemical. In the future, we could potentially use this same technology to create a breath test to detect cancer and other diseases.”
In copying this turkey-skin design, Lee and his team employed a technique they pioneered to mimic nanostructures like collagen fibers. The researchers found a way to get M13 bacteriophages, benign viruses with a shape that closely resembles collagen fibers, to self-assemble into patterns that could be easily fine-tuned.
The researchers found that, like collagen fibers, these phage-bundled nanostructures expanded and contracted, resulting in color changes. The exact mechanism behind the shrinking or expanding phage bundles is still unclear, but it’s possible that the small amount of water in the phage is reacting to the chemical vapors, the researchers said.
The turkey-inspired biosensors were exposed to a range of volatile organic compounds, including hexane, isopropyl alcohol and methanol, as well as TNT, at concentrations of 300 parts per billion. The researchers found that the viruses swelled rapidly, resulting in specific color patterns that served as “fingerprints” to distinguish the different chemicals tested.
The Latest on: Biosensors
[google_news title=”” keyword=”Biosensors” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
via Google News
The Latest on: Biosensors
- Three McCormick Faculty Elected to American Academy of Arts and Scienceson April 26, 2024 at 10:09 am
Wei Chen, Mark C. Hersam, and Uri J. Wilensky are among the 250 members elected in 2024, and six from the University. They are recognized for their excellence and commitment to uphold the Academy’s ...
- Take the Abermination mountain bike challenge!on April 26, 2024 at 9:49 am
Take a ride along a five-mile loop of pristine, wooded single track on the Mississippi River bluffs! Friends of Off-Road Cycling (FORC) invites you to take the challenge of the Illiniwek Abermination ...
- The JRC explains: technologies for fighting airborne germs - PCR, sequencing, and the reston April 26, 2024 at 3:10 am
During the COVID-19 pandemic, most of us made a rather intimate acquaintance with some of these technologies. And many of us are still confused about ...
- EQS-News: XTPL records all-time high revenues, Strategy execution remains on trackon April 26, 2024 at 12:06 am
Issuer: XTPL S.A. / Key word (s): Annual Results XTPL records all-time high revenues, Strategy execution remains on track 26.04.2024 / 07:30 CET/CEST The issuer is solely responsible for the ...
- Epicore Biosystems Releases Connected Hydration Wearableon April 25, 2024 at 10:12 pm
Epicore Biosystems has announced the commercial launch of Connected Hydration. Connected Hydration is a sweat-sensing wearable patch and mobile app that equips workers with customized, real-time ...
- The UW’s Institute for Protein Design keeps boosting startups, fueling AI-powered scienceon April 25, 2024 at 11:28 am
On Tuesday the latest venture based on IPD technology emerged: Xaira, a San-Francisco area startup co-founded by IPD head David Baker, backed with more than $1 billion from investors including Arch ...
- The Lundquist Institute Receives $2.6 Million Grant from U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity to Develop Wearable Biosensorson April 24, 2024 at 5:32 pm
The proposed sensor has the potential to not only revolutionize COPD management but also to impact healthcare by incorporating wearable electronics into chronic disease management Dr. Harry Rossiter, ...
- AI is boosting drug discovery and development — and sparking questions about proprietary dataon April 23, 2024 at 1:51 pm
AI and Biotech panel at Life Science Innovation Northwest 2024. From left: Danielle Greenawalt, Lynda Stuart, Sean McClain, Jonathan Cohen and moderator ...
- Scientists stencil-paint carbon nanotube components for flexible transparent electronicson April 23, 2024 at 9:23 am
Researchers from Skoltech, MIPT, and elsewhere have found a fast and inexpensive way to create geometric patterns in carbon nanotube films. The resulting films turned out to have superior properties ...
- Biosensors Market Growth Foreseen To Achieve USD 63.07 Billion Value By 2032, With An Estimated 9% CAGRon April 19, 2024 at 7:15 am
According to Market.us, the global biosensors market is projected to expand significantly, reaching an estimated value of approximately USD 63 billion by 2032, up from USD 27.2 billion in 2022. This ...
via Bing News