Nanoscale virus biosensors: state of the art

Abstract

Since the beginning of the new millennium, viruses have shown huge epidemio- logical and pandemic potential: severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2002, pandemic swine flu in 2009, and last but not least the West African Ebola outbreak in 2014. The occur- rence and spread of the new virus in pandemic dimension poses a threat to the health and lives of 7 billion people worldwide. There is a growing urgency for highly sensitive and selective detection techniques, usable for a wide number of applications, including disease diagnosis, pharmaceutical research, agriculture, as well as preventive measures. Nanobiosensors represent a new promising tool for virus detection. This review gives a brief survey of the issue of viral detection, comprising diagnostics of target structure of viruses such as nucleic acids or proteins. This review covers different detection principles, methods of fabrication, and applications of virus biosensors.