In the response to and recovery from a critical homeland security event involving deliberate or accidental release of biological agents, initial decontamination efforts are necessarily followed by tests for the presence of residual live virus or bacteria. Such 'clearance sampling' should be rapid and accurate, to inform decision makers as they take appropriate action to ensure the safety of the public and of operational personnel. However, the current protocol for clearance sampling is extremely time-intensive and costly, and requires significant amounts of laboratory space and capacity. Detection of residual live virus is particularly problematic and time-consuming, as it requires evaluation of replication potential within a eukaryotic host such as chicken embryos. The intention of this project was to develop a new method for clearance sampling, by leveraging Sandia's expertise in the biological and material sciences in order to create a C. elegans-based foam that could be applied directly to the entire contaminated area for quick and accurate detection of any and all residual live virus by means of a fluorescent signal. Such a novel technology for rapid, on-site detection of live virus would greatly interest the DHS, DoD, and EPA, and hold broad commercial potential, especially with regard to the transportation industry.
This report provides a detailed overview of the work performed for project number 130781, 'A Systems Biology Approach to Understanding Viral Hemorrhagic Fever Pathogenesis.' We report progress in five key areas: single cell isolation devices and control systems, fluorescent cytokine and transcription factor reporters, on-chip viral infection assays, molecular virology analysis of Arenavirus nucleoprotein structure-function, and development of computational tools to predict virus-host protein interactions. Although a great deal of work remains from that begun here, we have developed several novel single cell analysis tools and knowledge of Arenavirus biology that will facilitate and inform future publications and funding proposals.