Scientists from the University of California have designed a device due to which DNA detection and measurement can be done by the help of smartphones. Now a small new device that works in tandem with a smartphone has been used to successfully spot and measure the length of DNA molecules using fluorescence microscopy. These kinds of devices are usually large and expensive.

Designed at UCLA’s California NanoSystems Institute, the device accepts disposable chips within which the DNA is tagged and stretched out. The actual microscope is attached to a Windows smartphone. Special software was developed that captures the images and sends them to a server for final processing. Results come back and are displayed on the smartphone app, allowing the technology to be used anywhere with a cellular signal, even though the heavy computational processing is taken care of far away.