prayagraj a former student of allahabad university au has come out with a biosensor that can detect covid19 infection using sweat sampleamit dubey who is currently a senior scientist at quanta calculus greater noida has claimed to have developed the worlds first specific reliable ultrasmall gold nanoclusters for biomedical and biosensing applications to detect the presence of covid19 detailing about the study findings of which have been published in luminescence the journal of biological and chemical luminescence a peerreviewed journal published by wiley dubey said the biosensors would be a onestep identification or sensing technique in instances where traditional lab techniques are not readily available biosensors have already shown that they can deliver affordable and accessible diagnoses ultrasmall gold nanoclusters with diameters less than 2 nm are attracting increasing attention due to their unique sizedependent physicochemical properties which include strong luminescence and excellent biocompatibility the main component of the biosensor is ultrasmall gold nanoclusters as gold is unreactive it means that when it comes in to contact with a substance the team wishes to measure for example a potential disease biomarker present in sweat it does not chemically alter that substance but instead as the ultrasmall gold nanoclusters are so fine they can provide a large surface for that biomarker to bind to and this is where the other components of the sensor come in said dubey who did his phd from department of bioinformatics au in 2016as a lowpower laser is pointed at the ultrasmall gold nanoclusters some of the laser light is absorbed and some is reflected of the light reflected most have the same energy as the incoming light however some incoming light loses energy to the biomarker or other measurable substance and the discrepancy in energy is unique to the substance in question a sensor called a spectrometer can use this unique energy fingerprint to identify the substance this method is known as raman spectroscopycurrently our ultrasmall gold nanoclusterbased biosensors need to be finely tuned to detect specific substances and we wish to push both the sensitivity and specificity even further said dubey with this we think applications like cancer target site monitoring ideal for cancer drug delivery or even virus detection might be possible he saidthere is also potential for the ultrasmall gold nanocluster biosensor to work with other methods of chemical analysis besides raman spectroscopy such as electrochemical analysis but all these ideas require a lot more investigation said dubey he added that i hope this research can lead to a new generation of lowcost biosensors that can revolutionise health monitoring and reduce the financial burden of health care