The enemy is tuberculosis. The weapon is a biochip developed at Argonne and the Englehardt Institute of Molecular Biology. Click on image to see a larger view. Precise Treatment Quick analysis leading to more effective treatment for tuberculosis and other diseases is the goal of biochips developed by Argonne and the Russian Academy of Science's Englehardt Institute of Molecular Biology .
Biochips are glass slides to which are affixed microscopic, three-dimensional pads of a gel.
Each pad acts as a mini test tube. A single chip can host thousands of biological reactions in a few seconds. Technology permits construction of biochips with a very large number of gel pads, though those in use generally have from 100 to 5,000. Antibiotic use and misuse have created bacteria through natural selection that defy some of the same wonder drugs that once promised to end humankind's most deadly diseases. TB is an example.