Boost COVID-19 Home Test Kit With Glow-in-the-Dark Materials

Researchers at the University of Houston are using glow-in-the-dark materials to enhance and improve rapid COVID-19 home tests. Making those lines glow-in-the-dark so that they are more detectable, so the sensitivity of the test is better. Taking an at-home COVID-19 or pregnancy test is scientifically called a lateral flow assay (LFA) test, a diagnostic tool widely used because of its rapid results, low cost, and ease of operation. While reading the test results, you will see colored lines.

The first idea for glow-in-the-dark technology sprang from a star pasted on the ceiling of the researcher’s young daughter's bedroom. One night while he was putting her to sleep, he peered at the glow-in-the-dark star and his mind began to wander, applying its principles to science.

Within days researcher and his team were creating a test with glowing nanoparticles made of phosphors, which would make the particles even more detectable and the tests more accurate.

Glow-In-The-Dark COVID-19 Testing is First Project of New Hire

In this new development, there are two tricks. First, we use enzymes, proteins that catalyze reactions, to drive reactions that emit light, like a firefly. Second, we attached those light-emitting enzymes to harmless virus particles, along with antibodies that bind to COVID proteins. These findings are reported in the journal The Analyst.

The reason these steps are useful is that one antibody on a virus can bind to one COVID target on the test strip and bring along with it many light-emitting enzymes. So, the team gets lighter for each target, thus needing fewer targets to see the light, making the test more sensitive.

And while you might be able to read the results with your eye in a very dark room, the team created a little plastic box to exclude light and let a smartphone camera do the reading. This is more reproducible and probably more sensitive, and with smartphones, you can communicate the results to databases and things like that.

The sensitivity is better than essentially any commercial tests, making the technology useful in an array of medical arenas. This technology can be used for detecting all kinds of other things, including flu and HIV, but also Ebola and biodefense agents, and maybe toxins and environmental contaminants and pesticides in food.

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Source-Eurekalert