A kinder, sharper enzyme for spotting viruses — HIV first, others by reprogramming

Detecting a virus quickly and cheaply often comes down to one molecular worker: an enzyme that finds a specific strand of genetic code and raises the alarm. A team reporting in Cell Chemical Biology has engineered a heat-loving version of the CRISPR enzyme Cas13a to be sensitive without being trigger-happy — and in tests against a synthetic, non-infectious HIV sample, their detection assay performed 100 times better. The elegance is in the swapping: Cas13a works with a guide that tells it what to look for, and changing the guide retargets the same enzyme at other viruses — flu, Ebola, Zika, hepatitis C and more are named candidates. A sturdier, sharper enzyme will not diagnose anyone by itself, but it is exactly the kind of part that better field tests are built from.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: tech innovation