key: cord-0685986-idjvbcy4
authors: Gooding, J. Justin; Ligler, Frances S.
title: Virus Detection: What Were We Doing before COVID-19 Changed the World?
date: 2020-05-29
journal: ACS Sens
DOI: 10.1021/acssensors.0c01029
sha: 8c46a3777b0cc62985769b9b518b44e5b3424761
doc_id: 685986
cord_uid: idjvbcy4

nan

A s we sit here locked down in our homes while COVID-19 threatens how we live our lives, one thinks about the old life we led. We seldom worried about contact with other people, or people walking past us in the street. When we caught a viral infection, most of us thought of a cold or flu, and expected aches, pains, and a stuffy head, but few of us feared loss of life. And not many people were interested in topics such as testing rates, testing methods, or testing speeds. But some were. The papers in this virtual issue are by some of the researchers that have been developing tests to detect viruses. The type of research they were doing was no less important then than it is now. Current events have just brought the importance of their work into focus. HIV, SARS, MERS, bird flu, and zika had demonstrated that the emergence of new viruses can have an incredible effect on the world. Typically only affected communities paid attention, but with COVID-19 that is all of us.

What we have learned from COVID-19 is that the regions of the globe most successful in reducing the spread of the virus think South Korea, Taiwan, and Australia to name a fewhad a dual strategy of a rapid lockdown of the country, and extensive testing, Many tests per thousand people, and a low percentage of tests performed being positive, is a commonality. Experience with a variety of other viral outbreaks certainly meant much of South East Asia had well developed protocols established, which centered around testing and isolation. So, testing has been at the very front line of the fight against COVID-19. The most effective testing strategies are stratified, rather than being a one-size-fits-all approach. There are important roles for very simple screening tool such as temperature sensing, rapid molecular testsincluding the lateral flow-based IgM and IgG antibody tests that indicate exposure and response to the virus, and the quantitative PCR tests that measure the viral genome directly. We need all these types of tests, and we need improvements. It is clear that a rapid, portable test that could detect the virus directly, with high sensitivity and specificity, would be a brilliant advance. It is also clear that improving the sensitivity of the serological tests, so they could warn of infection earlier, would help reduce community transmissions.

In this virtual issue we concentrate on the development of molecular tests for viruses, a focus not surprising for two chemistry journals dealing with analytical measurement. The issue leads with a review on detection of biothreats (Mother Nature is an accomplished bioterrorist!), and then covers a range of innovative technologies 1 that focus on assays for point of care testing, 2−4 faster diagnostic testing, 5−8 more sensitive diagnostic testing, 9−17 characterizing the response to the virus, 18−21 and highly sensitive methods for biologically tracking and characterizing the virus. 22, 23 The papers cover technologies that detect genes specific to a virus, that detect antibodies, and that even detect the virus particles themselves. They cover viruses from the flu, to Ebola, MERS, zika, HIV, and already, SARS-CoV-2. We already have other papers going through our reviewing processes on SARS-CoV-2. We feel the papers in this virtual issue serve as a benchmark of the types of innovation the journals Analytical Chemistry and ACS Sensors are looking for. The papers we selected are just a subset of the many wonderful, innovative papers on infection detection we have published, and they represent the incredible work being done around the globe in detection science that will help keep us safe. When we read the papers, they give us hope that we will be far better equipped to deal with any future potential pandemics. We thank these scientists for their research.

Detecting Biothreat Agents: From Current Diagnostics to Developing Sensor Technologies

Development of an Electrochemical Paper-Based Analytical Device for Trace Detection of Virus Particles

Portable GMR Handheld Platform for the Detection of Influenza A Virus

Instrument-Free Point-of-Care Molecular Detection of Zika Virus

Microfluidic-CFPA Chip for the Point-of-Care Detection of African Swine Fever Virus with a Median Time to Threshold in about 10 min

Virus Bioresistor (VBR) for Detection of Bladder Cancer Marker DJ-1 in Urine at 10 pM in One Minute

Rapid Detection of Infectious Envelope Proteins by Magnetoplasmonic Toroidal Metasensors

Rapid and Fully Microfluidic Ebola Virus Detection with CRISPR-Cas13a

Sequence-Specific Recognition of HIV-1 DNA with Solid-State CRISPR-Cas12a-Assisted Nanopores (SCAN)

Cellular-Beacon-Mediated Counting for the Ultrasensitive Detection of Ebola Virus on an Integrated Micromagnetic Platform

HIV Detection via a Carbon Nanotube RNA Sensor

Emulsion Agglutination Assay for the Detection of Protein-Protein Interactions: An Optical Sensor for Zika Virus

Digital Single Virus Electrochemical Enzyme-Linked Immunoassay for Ultrasensitive H7N9 Avian Influenza Virus Counting

Ebola Virus Aptamers: From Highly Efficient Selection to Application on Magnetism-Controlled Chips

Target-Induced Cascade Amplification for Homogeneous Virus Detection

Single-Molecule-Based Detection of Conserved Influenza A Virus RNA Promoter Using a Protein Nanopore

Use of Super-Resolution Optical Microscopy To Reveal Direct Virus Binding at Hybrid Core-Shell Matrixes

Supersensitive Detection of the Norovirus Immunoplasmon by 3D Total Internal Reflection Scattering Defocus Microscopy with Wavelength-Dependent Transmission Grating

Membrane Fluidity Sensing on the Single Virus Particle Level with Plasmonic Nanoparticle Transducers

Determination of Antibody Population Distributions for Virus-Antibody Conjugates by Charge Detection Mass Spectrometry

Simple Strategy for Rapid and Sensitive Detection of Avian Influenza A H7N9 Virus Based on Intensity-Modulated SPR Biosensor and New Generated Antibody