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When a truck carrying suspected hazardous materials jackknifes after a police pursuit, FBI agent Rebecca Rose tries to make an on-the-scene determination.
The WAGD germ detector is similar to a real-life device, the BioSeeq. The BioSeeq handheld is a six-channel automated thermocycler rapidly transitions between melting, annealing, and extending temperatures for DNA and specific primer sequences thereby permitting the 1 x 10(9) fold amplification of biological samples.
In an interview with Technovelgy.com, Greg Bear had this to say about the WAGD germ detector:
I have this in the book, the WAGD, which can pick up every commonly pathogenic bacteria or virus trace by rubbing a wet felt-tip marker against it. I think that sort of thing can be done, and is being done, and that will help to determine when a biological attack is underway. But also, giving people the chance to rapidly immunize or prepare themselves, do research for a large national bio-defense immunization effort, which includes those possibilities in a national program, I think that's being contemplated now. It wasn't around the time of 9/11.
I modeled that on things I saw in 2002, briefcase size detection devices that would use microchannel fluidics labs, labs on a chip, that sort of thing."
Technovelgy: I don't know if you've read The Cobra Event, by Richard Preston...
GB: "No, I hadn't read that yet."
T: In the novel, he refers to a Boink (because that's the noise that it makes if it detects something), a handheld device that was a similar kind of idea. The only real handheld device I could find is the BioSeeq.
GB: "You could also use an Affymetrix chip which has all of these sequences encoded on its matrix, when the matrices light up, you have some evidence that you've been hit with something that has DNA similar to it. These have been used in laboratories for years when they do large-scale genetic testing with these chips that have been pre-programmed with bits of DNA which the opposite DNA will attach itself on."
(Read the rest of Greg Bear's interview on Quantico.)
Read a bit more about the precursors to the WAGD at TecTrends. Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This | Additional
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