The UK government has handed £1m in grants and awards to Nanosight, a nanotech company that has developed a new way of creating artificial antibodies that could offer early warning indicator of biological attack.

Their method synthetically reproduces what happens when the human body detects a virus. It does this through fabricating artificial binding sites using computer and microelectronics technology.

The immediate goal is to develop the technology into a portable detector that could be used in the field. In the very long term, the technology could be deployed across cities in passive sensors that would sound the alarm if they detected a bio-agent.

From The Register.