Innovative Use of Bees in Detecting COVID-19: A New Approach
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Chapter 1: The Power of Smell
Imagine closing your eyes and taking a deep breath. What scents do you perceive? The world around us—from the aroma of freshly brewed coffee to the scent of our pets—emits various odors. Millions of volatile molecules drift through the air, entering our nostrils and interacting with an intricate array of 400 proteins known as olfactory receptors. In total, humans possess around six million of these receptors.
Every object produces a distinct smell, akin to a fingerprint, comprised of numerous molecules, some detectable by us while others remain imperceptible. It's important to note that our bodies emit unique odors, which can change subtly when we fall ill. These minor metabolic shifts could potentially provide insights into a person's health status.
While humans struggle to identify these subtle changes in scent, many animals possess heightened olfactory senses. For instance, dogs have twice the variety of olfactory receptors compared to humans, totaling around 300 million. Previous studies have shown that dogs can accurately identify COVID-19. This raises an intriguing question: could we employ smaller, more efficient creatures for COVID-19 detection?
COVID-19 Sniffing Bees
Researchers at the startup InsectSense, in collaboration with Wageningen Bioveterinary Research, have successfully trained bees to detect COVID-19. Bees utilize their impressive sense of smell to navigate and recall the best locations for nectar, associating specific scents with particular flowers, making them relatively easy to train.
Bees exhibit extraordinary sensitivity; they can identify an odor molecule even among trillions of others. In experiments, scientists presented bees with COVID-19 samples collected from infected minks, rewarding them with sugar water. Over time, the bees learned to extend their tongues in response to the COVID-19 scent.
Subsequently, researchers introduced samples from uninfected minks without providing rewards. The bees quickly learned to associate the distinct scent of COVID-19 with the sweet reward, successfully detecting human COVID-19 samples in mere seconds.
The ability to train multiple bees simultaneously could enhance detection accuracy. In rural and low-resource environments, bees could be instrumental in identifying potential COVID-19 cases. Instead of relying on costly and time-consuming sequencing of numerous samples, bees could prioritize those needing further testing based on their sniffing capabilities.
The first video, "Dutch researchers train bees to detect COVID-19," illustrates this innovative approach, showcasing the potential of bees in disease detection.
Bio-Mimicry and Machine Learning
The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed specific metabolic changes linked to infections, yet our understanding of how our sense of smell operates remains limited. While we cannot simply observe bees under a microscope to discern the exact metabolites they detect, we can make educated assumptions and attempt to reverse-engineer these scents.
Nature often inspires advancements in biomedical engineering. InsectSense is applying biomimicry to create improved scent sensors. By analyzing a range of volatile molecules in a sample and utilizing insights from bees and other insects, researchers aim to determine when these creatures detect signs of disease.
Through machine learning techniques, these synthetic scent detectors could generate profiles for various odors. Currently, researchers are developing the Luminose, an artificial nose designed for this purpose, potentially eliminating the need for live animals in scent detection.
The future of disease identification may involve a greater reliance on olfactory detection than we previously imagined. Each disease or infection triggers subtle changes in our bodily functions, which, in turn, alters the scents we emit. The collaboration between super-sensitive animals and technology is paving the way for innovations in disease detection. Consider the possibilities if we could identify COVID-19 infections more rapidly or even detect Parkinson’s Disease years before its symptoms manifest.
The second video, "Dutch scientists have trained bees to detect COVID-19 | Your Morning," further discusses this groundbreaking research and its implications for the future of health science.