A TEST that can detect any of the 15 known strains of bird flu in just 24 hours will make it easier to screen wild birds for the virus without harming them.
Standard tests involve growing the virus in cells in a dish, which takes two weeks. Faster tests are available that rely on the DNA-amplifying PCR technique to detect the DNA of various avian influenza strains. “But they don’t always pick up the virus from swab samples from a bird. Some require tissue samples,” says Simone Warner of the Department of Primary Industries in Victoria, Australia.
Her team modified…
