The Taiwan News today had an incredible story that Taiwanese scientists have developed a mass spectrometer that can identify the weight of unicellular organisms.* Up until now, mass spectrometers could only be used to analyze compounds containing about fifty carbon atoms at most – making them useless for identifying proteins, let alone viruses or eukaryotic cells. The story describes how the researchers did it:
…the team at Academia Sinica refined their mass spectrometer by targeting the laser on a silicon wafer to cause acoustic waves, which can "push" the cell or virus out of the sample without destroying it.
Then, a quadruple ion trap is applied to catch the subject of interest for mass determination.
The story concludes by suggesting practical applications:
…if there is an epidemic, doctors can now isolate the suspected pathogen and weigh it, then compare the weight to the entries in the database to identify what it is.
"Since the database will also show the normal weight of a particular cell, the doctor can also identify if there is cancer metastasis by noticing that the weight of certain cells are changing," [head researcher Chang Huan-Cheng] added.
What the story neglects to tell the reader is how fast the process is liable to be. Got a sore throat? Forget having it swabbed and then letting the lab techs spend a day or two growing up a culture in an incubator to find out what it is. With the new mass spec, they’d merely have apply the sample to the silicon wafer and flip on the laser. Within minutes (maybe less!), they’d know what ails you. I’m going to guess that the time-limiting step of the procedure will end up being sample preparation.
If this isn’t some kind of hoax, then it’s literally Star Trek-level technology.
* A mass spectrometer works by ionizing a particle, and then running the ionized fragments through a magnetic device. The weight of the fragments are then determined by the speed by which they travel through the acceleration chamber – small fragments of a given charge reach the ion detector at a faster rate than larger fragments containing the same charge.
UPDATE (Apr 26/06): A Taiwanese government publication describes the technique (and goes a bit above my head in doing so). The relevant material is on page 4 of the pdf file.