Detecting viral infections in bacteria traditionally depends on the cultivation of both bacteria and viruses, which miss 99 percent of the bacteria found in the environment because they cannot be grown there the culture, the researcher said, saying that testing for viral diseases in noncultural bacteria is expensive and difficult. to be widely applied, not unlike the early stages of COVID-19 testing.
The key to testing viral infections for faster and more accessible non-culture bacteria was to separate single bacterial cells into small bubbles and melt the genes of the virus and bacteria together once inside.
“The cooled genes act as name tags for the bacteria and viruses,” said lead researcher Eric Sakowski of Mount St. Louis University. Mary in the USA.
“By combining the genes together, we are able to identify which bacteria are infected, as well as the differentiation of the virus that causes the disease,” Sakowski said.