Llama blood to assist in detecting pathogens
Breakthrough effort at the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research manipulates antibodies that can survive high temperatures; single-chain molecules do not fold under heat; Marburg and ebola assays first on the agenda
Don’t spit on this idea. Llamas, those disagreeable cousins of the camel, may be useful in detecting deadly pathogens. Virologists at the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research (SFBR) report that a manipulated version of an antibody found in llama blood can serve as an inexpensive biosensor.
Scientists have long known that antibodies could be useful in detecting bioweapons, but until recently any attempts at manufacturing sensors based on them have been stymied by a seemingly-unsurmountable problem: the antibodies are extremely unstable at high temperatures. “That’s the Achilles’ heel of these antibodies—when you start heating them up, those domains come apart and they catastrophically aggregate and they refold and they can’t reassemble,” says Andrew Hayhurst of FSBR. Llama blood, as well as that from camels and sharks, is much more stable, Hayhurst found, because the relevant antibodies within are only single-chain, rather than double-chain molecules, and can therefore remain functional even when exposed to temperatures as high as 90 degrees C.
The future? “We’re looking at diagnostic assays for Ebola and Marburg viruses that we can actually take out into the field in Africa—dreadfully resource-poor environments, incredibly hot and where we need diagnostic assays,” Hayhurst said.
-read more in Nikhil Swaminathan’s Scientific American report
