Many of you may be tired of hearing the same line over and over, but it still persists: Technology truly is astonishing. When one thinks of a cell phone in today's standards, it might be hard for that person to believe that some time ago, cell phones literally had a bare minimum of functions, and the majority of them was calling and receiving calls. The thought of games being put on to cell phones just seemed like a bizarre and unnecessary waste of time. Now, phones can do almost anything, and one more ability was added to the wide range of things a phone can do just recently: DNA testing.
DNA testing on a phone sounds ridiculous to have, but then again, so was the idea of putting a snake on old Nokia cell phones. Bioscience Technology states that the University of California's own researches has found a way to turn your smartphone into a DNA-scanning fluorescent microscope. Their intention for using smartphones in such a way was for its uses in laps with poor resources as well as for personalized medicine. While it does make your phone look a bit bulkier than many would prefer, the attachment does include a lens, a filter and a mount and laser diode in a 3D-printed case, allowing your smartphone to now image and size DNA molecules 50,000 times thinner than the human hair.
While this expands greatly on what smartphones are capable of, BBC states that this can help doctors treat cancer, tuberculosis and other diseases, and will be veered to focusing on drug resistance. By using the information carried in our DNA, it can make a diagnosis and this is mainly done in two areas today: cancer, where it can find if there are certain mutations in tumours resistant to drugs, thus helping in prescribing the right treatment, and in infectious diagnostics, where it can figure out if something is viral of bacterial. If it's bacterial, it can figure out if there are antibiotic-resistant genes or not. The use is sure to help doctors and researchers world wide in order to pursue the against the smallest and most dangerous of enemies.
