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Nucleic acid detection is crucial in the clinical practice since it can be used to rapidly identify pathogenic organisms. Rapid detection with highly sensitive methods is essential for diagnosis and choosing treatment courses. This is a complex task since samples need to be enriched with the nucleotide targets and at the same time needs to eliminate nucleases, PCR inhibitors and host material. This means that to detect and identify genetic material from a pathogen, in the form of 18S and 28S rRNA, in an efficient and reliable way, the protocol needs to eliminateeukaryotic rRNA from the sample to avoid competition for the substrates during the cDNA synthesis, since it decreases the detection sensitivity.

The Sepmag equipment is mentioned in the Encyclopedia of Inorganic and Bioinorganic Chemistry on the chapter “Biomedical applications of magnetic nanoparticles” written by Daniel Ortega. This chapter starts with examples of several magnetic isolation methods such as the isolation of macromolecules from enzyme separation that involves immobilized affinity ligands to the removal of cancer cells frombone marrow, which is one of the most important applications ofbioseparation techniques.

Magnetic separation techniques have become an essential tool in many areas of research. Most technological advances in these techniques have been possible due to the work of many researchers trying to solve everyday technical problems or optimizing existing protocols. In order to get the specialists in the field from all over the world together, meetings are an important way for contact between researchers that can help find new applications and solutions in the scientific and clinical setting.

Renewed version of ‘The Basic Guide to Scale-Up Biomagnetic Separation Processes’ e-book is already available (FREE)!

Magnetic separation techniques are becoming more and more versatile as researchers take advantage of this technology to tackle everyday problems and come up with innovative solutions. One striking example of this innovation capacity is the technique developed recently by Ziyuan Wang and colleagues. These researchers combined magnetic separation beads with bacteriophages to selectively isolate bacteria. Since they wanted to purify Escherichia coli from samples with high affinity and specificity they used T7 bacteriophages to act as binding molecules, similarly to how normally antibodies are used.

Surface-enhanced Raman scatteringis a new technique to perform immunoassays that can be used to detect several disease biomarkers.It is better than traditional immunoassays, like ELISA, since it is more sensitive, selective and takes less time, which are precious things in diagnosis.

Uranium is an environmental pollutant with severe health and ecological consequences since it has radioactive and chemical toxicity affecting mammalian reproduction and development. Therefore, the environmental detection of this element is essential, to prevent deleterious effects on the ecosystems.