Biological Materials MASINT
In modern materials analysis, the line between chemical and biological methods can blur, since immunochemistry, an important discipline, uses biologically created reagents to detect chemical and biological substances. Key characteristics of a technique that can be adapted to field use, as opposed to slow and labor-intensive methods such as culture-based identification, depend on a probe that recognizes and reacts with a molecule, receptor, or other feature of the organism, and a separate transducer recognizes the positive results of the probe and provides it to the operator. The combination is what determines analysis time, sensitivity and specificity. The major families of probe methods are: nucleic acid, antibody/antigen binding, and ligand/receptor interactions. Transducer techniques include: electrochemical, piezoelectric, colorimetric, and optical spectrometric systems.
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