Portable device speeds up dengue virus identification

High hopes for affordable DNA sequencer in high-risk developing countries A team led by a professor from the University of Tokyo has devised a fast and cost-effective method of determining dengue fever virus types using a portable DNA sequencer. Use of the palm-sized device will hopefully be able to speed up diagnosis at hospitals in developing countries and also help trace the path of infection. There are four types of the virus that causes dengue fever, a mosquito-borne tropical disease. A patient with a history of infection from one type can develop severe symptoms if infected with another. The team led by Yutaka Suzuki, a professor at the University of Tokyo, as well as Hokkaido University in northern Japan, has taken MinION, a next-generation nanopore DNA sequencer developed by Oxford Nanopore Technologies in the U.K., and applied it to the identification of the virus types. The process starts with serum being separated from a blood...