Magnetic levitation system for culture-independent virus isolation from biological and environmental samples

病毒一直在进化，RNA病毒尤其擅长这一点。偶尔，当有幸运的突变组合时，会进化出一种新的菌株，它与我们的免疫系统习惯的菌株非常不同。当新的毒株具有有效的人与人之间的传播力时，特别是由于呼吸道传播方式，当缺乏有效或广泛可用的医疗对策时，大流行就会发生，从而导致可观的病死率。这些都是新冠肺炎的特点，最早于2019年12月下旬在武汉启动，中国于2019年12月下旬，随后在全球迅速传播，导致其于2020年3月被世界卫生组织认定为全球大流行。现在我们都知道病毒式传播意味着什么了！ 科学家们已经预计新冠肺炎疫情将分多波发生，每一波都会在几周内席卷全球，持续时间长达三个月。目前，由于技术限制，在疫情开始前分离和鉴定新冠肺炎病原体几乎是不可能的。为了解决这一技术差距，我们的目标是：开发一种与培养无关的新技术(基于模拟和实验方法)，以更快、更有效地从不同环境或生物样本类型中分离病毒颗粒。我们还打算对所开发的系统的敏感性和有效性进行数学模拟，以便该系统能够适应未来的任何其他类型的病毒。

Viruses are evolving all the time and RNA viruses are particularly good at it. Once in a while, when there is a lucky combination of mutations, a new strain evolves that is very different from those that our immune systems are used to. Pandemic happens when the new strain has efficient human to human transmissibility, especially due to respiratory mode of spread, leading to appreciable case fatality rates when there is absence of an effective or widely available medical countermeasure. These are all characteristics of COVID-19, first started in Wuhan, China in late December 2019, and then rapidly spread around the world, leading to its identification as a global pandemic in March 2020 by the World Health Organization. Now we all know what going viral means! Scientists are already expecting the COVID-19 pandemic to occur in multiple waves, with each wave sweeping across the globe in a matter of weeks and lasting as long as three months. Currently, because of technical limitations, isolation and identification of causative agent of COVID-19 before the start of outbreak is nearly impossible. To address this technological gap, here we aim to: Develop a new culture-independent technology (based on both simulation and experimental approaches) for faster and more efficient isolation of viral particles from different environmental or biological sample types. We also aim to mathematically simulate the sensitivity and validity of the developed system, so that the system can be adapted to any other type of viruses in the future.