Plastic chip detects waterborne viruses

Waterborne viral diseases pose a serious threat to public health around the world. An EU-funded consortium has therefore developed an advanced, reliable nanotechnology-based sensor that can rapidly detect pathogens in water, thereby enabling better monitoring of water quality. Urban wastewater contains large numbers of human pathogenic viruses, which cannot be completely removed by even the most advanced wastewater treatments. Furthermore, conventional biological water quality indicators are both time consuming and labour intensive, and do not provide adequate information about the presence of pathogenic viruses.These challenges have been addressed by the project AQUAVIR (Portable automated water analyser for viruses). The consortium, comprising 14 partners from 8 European countries, set out to develop a prototype virus sensor system for monitoring rotavirus, norovirus and hepatitis A virus in various types of water meant for human use. 

'The virus monitoring system is intended to detect virus particles in a concentrated water sample on the basis of an electrical readout. Measurement data can then be sent to a monitoring station', says Dr Noemi Rozlosnik, the coordinator of AQUAVIR. 'The system consists of a "Water sampling and filtering unit" (WSFU) and a "concentration and measuring system" (CMS), which includes a virus concentration unit (VCU) and a virus detection unit (VDU).'