US scientists have developed a cheap, highly accurate test that can be used to diagnose conditions by detecting protein biomarkers in subjects' DNA. The test could be as simple to use as a home pregnancy testing kit, according to the researchers from the Wyss Institute at Harvard University and Boston's Children's Hospital. In their study, published online today in Nature Communications, they describe how they created an inexpensive DNA sequencing kit using commercially available consumer electronics components. It reduced false positives to nearly zero and achieved lab-quality sensitivity.
US scientists have developed a cheap, highly accurate test that can be used to diagnose conditions by detecting protein biomarkers in subjects' DNA. The test could be as simple to use as a home pregnancy testing kit, according to the researchers from the Wyss Institute at Harvard University and Boston's Children's Hospital. In experiments, the method was used to detect prostate-specific antigen and to screen between different strains of the Dengue virus in less than an hour. It reduced false positives to nearly zero and achieved lab-quality sensitivity.