Drop under tension

A team of bioengineers from the University of Arizona has built a low-cost PCR system that can detect targets within four minutes using minimal sample preparation. According to principal investigator Jeong-Yeol Yoon, the technology could be used during doctor appointments or surgeries to screen for antibiotic resistance and immediately treat patients accordingly.

"We want everything done in the same device in a very short period of time, and to do that, we need to have a paradigm shift," Yoon said. "We need to use a detection modality which is radically different, and in our case, that's interfacial tension."...