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Given the technical limitations of existing nucleic-acid amplification and serologic methods, the human virome has remained relatively undefined. Now, a multinational team of investigators has used advances in molecular biology to create a rapid and relatively inexpensive ($25 per sample) technique to simultaneously screen for antibodies to 206 human viruses and >1000 different strains. Development of this test involved synthesis of 93,904 oligonucleotides that encode segments of viral proteins and introduction of these sequences into bacteriophages, which then displayed the viral protein segments on their surfaces.
When the resulting “library” of bacteriophages is incubated with a human serum sample, antibodies in the sample recognize and b…