Nanotechnology helps in detecting Prions
12 October 2008Prions are the basic cause of mad cow disease, a fatal neurogenerative conditions in cattle. Mad cow disease is also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and it has caused the death of more than two hundred people worldwide. At present the testing for prions, is very time consuming and no short duration test is possible to identify the presence of the prions in cattle.
Prions are abnormal proteins that converts the normal proteins to abnormal form and therefore the presence of Prions can lead to mass scale conversions of useful proteins to abnormal proteins and can cause not only mad cow but can also cause scrapie in sheep and Creutzfeldt-Jacob in humans. All the diseases are neurogenrative diseases and in all the cases, the symptoms appear after many years and therefore the treatment cannot be initiated at primary stage of the disease.
Researchers at Cornell University have developed a new device called nanoscale resonators and these nano devices act similar to a tuning fork. Once a prion attached to a resonator’s sensor, the vibrational frequency of the resonator get changes and by measuring the change in vibrational frequency, the concentration of the prions can be calculated.
At present the nanoscale resonators can detect prions only in saline solution, however the research is going on and scientists believe that in future the technique can be used to measure prions in cow blood also.
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