“Far to the right side of the decimal point—beyond milli, micro, nano, pico, and femto—lives the atto, the metric prefix representing 10-18. Slap it in front of a unit of concentration, such as molar, and it means that something exists in an extraordinarily small amount—think one part per quintillion. That’s the realm of SHERLOCK, a new diagnostic system that can detect attomolar levels of viruses in a sample and also distinguish Zika from its close relative, dengue. This exquisitely sensitive and specific tool promises to help detect diseases that other diagnostics miss, and it’s simple and cheap to use. Sexier still, it exploits a variation of CRISPR, the genome-editing method that has become the rage in biology…”
#future = #health #medicine #wellness #tech #innovation #science #design #biotech #biology #singularity #engineering #ai #artificialintelligence #robots #automation #CRISPR
