New breakthrough in surface enhanced Raman rapid inspection for COVID-19!

Facts about the outbreak in the United States:

Up to now, there are 17.14 million confirmed cases in the United States, a total of 73.56 million confirmed cases worldwide, a total of 1.64 million deaths, and a total of 191 confirmed cases in countries and regions.

The application of SERS technology in rapid virus detection has laid a solid foundation.

The novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) epidemic has become a global public health emergency. At present, the development of the epidemic is showing a long-term and complicated trend. The task of maintaining the results of epidemic prevention and control and preventing the epidemic from rebounding in our country is still arduous. Since the new crown epidemic is outbreak, the experience and lessons of domestic and foreign anti-epidemics have fully demonstrated that rapid and accurate diagnosis of the disease has an important role in epidemic prevention and control.

Current new coronavirus detection methods:

Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method and rapid detection method based on immunochromatographic test paper.

The first needs to take a throat swab sample first, and then send it to the laboratory medicine center. Medical staff receive patient samples in the reagent preparation area, and extract the nucleic acid of the sample in the sample preparation area. Amplify and replicate the nucleic acid sample, and finally analyze whether the nucleic acid in the sample can be matched with the standard sample in the amplification product analysis area, and check whether the result is positive through the instrument.

Although the PCR detection method has high sensitivity, its high cost and long cycle shortcomings require other detection methods to compensate. The rapid detection method is mainly based on immunochromatographic test paper, which uses colloidal gold to label biological macromolecules to make a test paper that can detect viral antigens or IGM antibodies in the patient's blood. This method can shorten the detection time to 20 millimeters.
But the accuracy and sensitivity are limited, and the false positive rate is high.

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy technology for detection of new coronavirus spike protein.

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy （SERS ）technology is an emerging surface spectroscopy analysis technology, which can magnify the Raman signal of analytes by more than one million times.
This amplification is mainly derived from the enhancement of the local electromagnetic field caused by the localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) of metal nanostructures.
SERS technology has many advantages such as high sensitivity, high fingerprint identification, high resolution, non-destructive, fast, etc., which is very suitable for research fields based on molecular recognition and detection.

Optosky series Raman microscope

At present, SERS technology has been successfully used at home and abroad to achieve direct non-labeled detection of dengue fever virus (DENV), H1N1 influenza virus, etc., indicating that SERS technology can become a very promising virus detection method.
SARS-CoV-2 is a sense single-stranded RNA virus. Its particles are nearly spherical or medium polygonal, with a diameter of about 80-160nm. There are a large number of spike proteins (S protein) with a width of about 7nm and a length of about 23nm on the surface of the envelope. The S protein is a key protein for the SARS-COV-2 virus to infect the human body. Therefore, the S protein can be used as one of the markers for SARS-CoV-2 virus detection.

The ATR8800 series microscopic Raman spectrometer integrates two lasers and combines the advantages of the microscope and the Raman spectrometer. The micro-Raman detection platform makes it possible to"seen and test", and the visually accurately locates the Raman detection platform, so that the observer can detect the Raman signals of different surface states on the sample and display the microzoning shape of the detected position on the computer, which greatly facilitates the Raman micro-area detection.

The full series of ATR 8800 can be fully automatic focus, automatic scanning, key operation, batch experimentation, uniformity scanning, etc., without waiting, and can be obtained. Highly reliable scanning imaging Raman data.
The ATR8800 is equipped with spectrometers with different focal lengths to meet the requirements of different resolutions. The ATR8800 is also equipped with objective lenses specially designed for Raman systems, which brings laser spots to the limit of diffraction, and then displays focus information accurately and intuitively on the computer through 5 million cameras. The problem of collecting Raman signals in ordinary Raman systems is slightly higher or slightly lower than the actual optimal focal surface, thus improving Raman spectral quality.

The ATR8800 perfectly solves the loss of the camera imaging time path, and realizes the separation of camera imaging from Raman signal collection, so as to obtain the best signal strength. At the same time, the ATR8800 uses high-performance Raman, whether it is sensitive, signal-to-noise ratio, stable, etc., which is a leading level in the industry, providing a strong guarantee for Raman's research.

Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) has been widely recognized by many industries because of its simple operation, fast speed, sensitivity, high resolution, and fingerprint recognition of chemical structures.
Therefore, the use of SERS substrates for virus detection has attracted widespread attention.