A new blood test developed at the Johns Hopkins University can identify individual molecules in human blood samples with minimal detection errors.
Among the molecules was a mutated protein thought to be restricted to the inside of cells, mostly within the nucleus. It is the first time that single-molecule imaging has been applied to visualise disease-causing molecules in blood.
The researchers call their new approach “single-molecule augmented capture”.
They used the technique to detect rare intracellular proteins, secreted proteins and membrane proteins.
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