[+]Enlarge A VERY SMART PHONE A fluorescence microscope attachment on a standard smartphone (left) can image individual DNA strands (middle) and assess the distribution of lengths in a sample (right), potentially useful in some diagnostic tests. Credit: ACS Nano

[+]Enlarge ONE FOR THE ALBUM A simple smartphone attachment (top) uses a blue laser-diode to illuminate coverslips holding DNA samples. The phone’s camera can snap images of single DNA molecules (bottom left) that are surprisingly similar to those from a conventional microscope (bottom right). Scale bars are 10 µm. Credit: ACS Nano

With a smartphone and a $400 microscope attachment, scientists now can measure the length of individual DNA molecules (ACS Nano 2014, DOI: 10.1021/nn505821y).

Developed by Aydogan Ozcan and colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles, the mobile microscopy unit weighs less than 190 g and is powered by three AAA batteries.

Surveying the lengths of DNA strands in a sample can reveal genetic features associated with disease such as copy-number variation, in which a particular section of a genome is deleted or duplicated. Because many people in the developing world own mobile phones, Ozcan hopes that the device could be useful for diagnostic tests in such resource-limited settings.

In proof-of-principle tests, the researchers analyzed a few microliters of a purified solution of DNA labeled with fluorescent dyes. Squeezing the solution between two coverslips stretches the DNA molecules into straight lines.

The fluorescence microscope attachment contains a compact blue laser diode to illuminate hundreds of these strands in the field of view. The smartphone then takes a series of snapshots and sends them to a remote server that runs a program to calculate the strand lengths.

The researchers tested the device on DNA molecules ranging from 5,000 to 48,000 base pairs in length. For strands 10,000 base pairs or longer, the mobile microscope successfully calculated their length within 1,000 base pairs, closely matching results from a conventional bench-top fluorescence microscope costing many thousands of dollars.