New biochip to identify TB.

A new biochip developed by American and Russian scientists may help diagnose drug-resistant tuberculosis and point researchers toward new treatment options. Created by teams at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago, IL, and the Russian Academy of Sciences' Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology in Moscow, the chips can perform thousands of biochemical reactions at the same time. The chip works when a single strand of DNA from a TB strain is laid down; if the strands match correctly, the test is positive for drug-resistant TB. Researchers chose tuberculosis to test the biochip's diagnostic efficacy because drug-resistant strains of the disease are on the rise and current tests take weeks or months to identify which strain a patient has.