The new smartphone device has been devised by electrical and bioengineer Aydogan Ozcan of the University of California, Los Angeles. The device works as a smartphone attachment, in the form of a mini-microscope. The device can estimate the lengths of DNA molecules in a sample. This will help with the identification of medical samples.The unit an reveal copy-number variations and other genetic features of disease, making it a potential tool for diagnostic field tests, according to Chemical & Engineering News.
The specially created unit is light, in weighing less than 190 grams. It is also designed to be fairly affordable (at least in countries with more wealthy medical services), retailing at around $400. The device also has a low power consumption, operating from standard batteries.
In various trials, technologists have demonstrated the smartphone microscope’s functionality by analyzing different purified solutions of fluorescently labeled DNA molecules. By placing the test solution between two coverslips, the method stretches the samples of DNA into straight lines. Following this, a compact blue laser within the fluorescence microscope attachment is activated and it shines on the DNA. This captures an image and here the smartphone proceeds to send the images to a remote server, where a computer to calculates the DNA strand lengths.
From additional testing on DNA molecules (that ranged from 10,000 to 48,000 base pairs) the researchers discovered that the smartphone microscope was capable of estimating length within about 1,000 base pairs. This was a similar accuracy to that found with conventional bench-top fluorescence microscopes.
Other research groups are also working on smartphone microscopes. The objective is to bring the power of microscope-based diagnostics to parts of the world without fully equipped laboratories in every region. The primary application is with the diagnosis of infectious diseases. This involves miniaturizing existing micro- and nano-analysis tools further to make them both more affordable and more powerful.
The app and the associated research have been published in the journal ACS Nano. The paper is called “Imaging and Sizing of Single DNA Molecules on a Mobile Phone.”
