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NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE

SP1541/ES1541 EXPLORING SCIENCE COMMUNICATION THROUGH POPULAR SCIENCE

Assignment: Science News Article (2)

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Discipline of the selected research article: Chemistry, Biology

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 Revolutionary Sensors Can Tell If Virally Ill Patients Are Infectious

In 1918, a ravaging force struck the world, mercilessly claiming the lives of fifty million
people. This cataclysm known as the Spanish Flu was perpetrated by tiny particles called
viruses. Living amid the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve become well aware of how potent
viruses are. They attack us from the inside as they sneakily jump from one person to another
– culminating in a rapid spread of infection that’s engulfing the world.
Viral outbreaks are tricky to control because we have no good way of telling whether an
infected person is infectious. This is problematic because it prevents healthcare
professionals from making fully informed medical decisions which results in misdiagnoses –
compromising patients’ health and causing more infections. While we can test whether
someone has been infected, infected people aren’t always infectious.
Infectious viruses replicate at high rates and are found after the early stages of an infection.
On the other hand, viruses are non-infectious during the early stages of the disease or when
they’ve been destroyed by the immune system after recovery. Non-infectious viruses
replicate very slowly or not at all.
The tests we use to diagnose viral infections cannot make this distinction; they can’t tell
whether someone is infectious.
To understand this limitation, let’s look at the tests used to diagnose viral infections.
In their research article, Burrell et al. discussed the types of tests used to diagnose viral
diseases from patient samples - serology, direct detection, and virus isolation. Serology
checks for the presence of antibodies against a specific virus. In contrast, direct detection
checks whether parts of the virus are present. Virus isolation involves growing the virus
from a patient’s sample to study the virus. It’s rarely used for patient testing because
growing viruses takes a lot of time and work.
Serology and direct detection play different roles in diagnosing viral diseases. Direct
detection tells us whether a patient is currently infected, while serology tells us whether a
patient has been infected in the past. Unfortunately, neither test tells us anything about
whether a patient is infectious - the amounts of antibodies or virus parts in a patient have
no bearing on whether they are infectious.
You can envisage how this can mislead healthcare professionals and cause them to
mismanage patients. Hospitals may prematurely release infectious patients with low levels
of virus parts. Patients who’ve recovered and are no longer infectious may unnecessarily
take up medical resources because their levels of virus parts remain high.
Imagine a test that could tell if someone was infectious – these issues would be avoided.
Healthcare professionals could better manage, quarantine, and treat infectious patients.
Thankfully, we won’t have to imagine! Researchers from the University of Illinois have
developed a powerful sensor that detects infectious viruses in a sample. Amazingly, the
sensor distinguishes between infectious and non-infectious viruses!
How does it work? The sensor uses two important parts – aptamers and nanopores.
Aptamers are DNA molecules that only bind to infectious viruses. They’re like police officers
looking for wanted criminals. Like how a police officer recognizes a wanted criminal by their
appearance, aptamers identify infectious viruses by their surfaces and latch onto them.
Non-infectious viruses are ignored because aptamers don’t recognize them.
What’s fascinating about aptamers is they’re not created – they’re selected from a massive
pool of random DNA sequences through trial and error. Researchers start by mixing the
DNA sequences with infectious and non-infectious viruses. Then, they discard the DNA
bound to the non-infectious viruses while making many copies of the DNA that only binds to
infectious viruses – the aptamers.
On the other hand, nanopores are tiny holes that act like police radios – sending signals to
inform us that the aptamers have caught the infectious virus. Aptamers are attached to the
nanopores in the sensor, and an electrical current continuously flows through the
nanopores. When an aptamer grabs onto an infectious virus, the virus will block the
nanopores, reducing the electric current flowing through it. So, a decrease in current means
infectious viruses are present in the sample.
To test the sensor, researchers used human saliva and serum spiked with infectious and
non-infectious viruses of HAdV and SARS-CoV-2. These viruses have vastly different
structures – this allows the researchers to see if their sensor works on different types of
viruses. They were also picked as they are of public health concern – SARS-CoV-2 causes
COVID-19, while HAdV is an emerging waterborne virus found worldwide.
Researchers tested the sensors on these samples to promising results! Both sensors produce
strong signals with infectious viruses, while little to no signal was produced with non-
infectious viruses - this means that the sensors are very effective at detecting only infectious
viruses. Furthermore, the detectors could spot infectious viruses even at very low
concentrations, showing an ultra-high level of sensitivity comparable to state-of-the-art
tests.
The sensor only detects infectious viruses, so it can tell us if an individual is infectious. This
potentially revolutionizes how viral infections and outbreaks are managed - allowing
healthcare professionals to make more informed medical decisions based on whether a
patient is infectious.
The sensor is incredibly versatile and can be used for new emerging viruses. Since aptamers
are selected through trial and error, we don't need prior knowledge about a virus to
produce sensors for it.
However, we should note that the sensor is currently too complicated to be used outside
the laboratory. Fret not, though - researchers are currently working to implement the
sensor into easy-to-use test kits.
The potential applications of the sensor aren’t just limited to patient testing!
“The aptamer technology could be further developed into multichannel platforms for
detecting other emerging waterborne viral pathogens of public and environmental health
concern," said Marinas, one of the lead researchers.
Viruses like HAdV are transmitted through contaminated water and cause severe viral
outbreaks. The sensor could potentially detect waterborne viruses early, and we’ll be able
to stop outbreaks before they even occur!
Researchers added that studying how aptamers recognize infectious viruses could advance
our understanding of them by providing valuable new insight into their infection
mechanisms.
(1000 words)

References: (APA citation style)

Bibliography
Peinetti, Lake, R. J., Cong, W., Cooper, L., Wu, Y., Ma, Y., . . . Llu, Y. (2021). Direct detection of human
adenovirus or SARS-CoV-2 with ability to inform infectivity using DNA aptamer-nanopore
sensors. SCIENCE ADVANCES. (Source Article)

Burrell, C. J., Howard, C. R., & Murphy, F. A. (2016). Laboratory Diagnosis of Virus Diseases. NCBI,
135-154. (Reference Article)

Reflective commentary
I used analogies to explain how the sensor works. I anticipated that readers might have
difficulty grasping the mechanism of the sensor because its components operate at a very
small scale, which makes it difficult to visualize. People are familiar with police officers
and how they chase wanted criminals - using this as an analogy paints a vivid image in the
readers' minds and enhances their understanding of how the sensor works. Using the
police analogy also allows me to seamlessly link the aptamers and nanopores in my
explanations. I chose analogies over metaphors because analogies allow me to convey the
actual science behind the mechanisms which I felt was necessary - metaphors usually
sacrifice more accuracy.
To get readers engaged, I focused on the teleological appeal of the sensor. I started off by
‘scaring’ readers with viruses to highlight the urgent need to control a viral outbreak. This
allows me to bring up the limitation that the sensor solves - the inability of tests to inform
infectiousness of patients. The consequences of such a limitation were described which
emphasizes the need for the sensor. This highlights the significance and usefulness of the
sensor in being able to determine the infectiousness of patients. I also brought up the
potential applications of the sensor beyond patient testing - how it can even be used to
prevent future outbreaks of waterborne viruses – the notion of preventing an outbreak
altogether would further excite readers about the discovery.
(244 words)