The researchers developed a protocol for dengue and chikungunya virus detection, which they plan to continue to test for outbreak monitoring and diagnostics.
The CDC says that the number of people in the US who have been infected with diseases carried by mosquitoes, ticks, and flea bites have more than tripled in recent years.
The team paired the SHERLOCK platform developed in Feng Zhang's lab with a protocol that detects viruses directly from bodily fluids in less than two hours.
The latest version of the nucleic acid detection platform uses three CRISPR enzymes, making it more sensitive and capable of smaller quantitative measurements.
Investigators used gene expression and immunological profiling to detect distinct immune responses in dengue virus-infected children with or without symptoms.
The PCR-based test can simultaneously detect for the Zika virus, all serotypes of the dengue virus, the chikungunya virus, the West Nile virus, and a host gene.
Phylogenetic patterns for more than 2,200 dengue viruses collected in Asia over almost 60 years suggest air travel hubs have contributed to the virus' spread in the region.
The group will study the potential risks and benefits of using CRISPR/Cas9 to develop gene drive systems for control and manipulation of mosquito populations.
Researchers hope to tease out the signature effects that different carcinogens leave on the genome to determine their contributions to disease, Mosaic reports.
