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CoronaPore

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From Molecupedia, the encyclopedia of very small things
2020 pandemic project and Epic Quest Bio badge

CoronaPore was a 2020 project in which demonpore, inc., now Molecular Reality Corporation, tried to build its Molecular Aquarium quickly in response to COVID-19. Its name survives on a badge in the company's management game, Epic Quest Bio, given to the members who took part. The badge, "CoronaPore project", reads in full: "You tried to help us build the molecular aquarium early on in the pandemic."[1]

The project left pore arrays made in 2020, which in 2026 were waiting on Kent Kemmish's desk to be tested, and no published results.[2] Asked what became of it, a set of prepared answers written for the company's chatbot replies: "Oh, life… If you really want to hear about why that didn't work out you gotta talk to Kemmishtree, but you might ruin his and your day, and it is time to move beyond trauma and create joy and glory and hope in the world."[1]

Background

In January 2020, Kemmish later wrote, "We saw covid coming (pretty much every friend I have in biotech did and launched some kind of project), and it was obvious that solid-state nanopores could make a difference." The company's own project was the aquarium: "We tried to launch the Molecular Aquarium (described elsewhere) because of covid."[3]

The case for pores rested on published work. In 2018 a group in Osaka had passed single virus particles through a solid-state nanopore and used machine learning to tell apart serotypes of one virus, which Kemmish noted "are all roughly the same size and shape"; he called the study "a key paper that gave us confidence".[3][4] In 2021 the same group reported a portable system that distinguished four coronaviruses of similar size, including SARS-CoV-2, and detected SARS-CoV-2 in saliva with 90 percent sensitivity and 96 percent specificity in a five-minute measurement.[5] Kemmish wrote that the researchers "built a startup called AIpore that actually shipped a working product"; the startup, Aipore, concluded its activities in 2025.[3][6]

Scale

SARS-CoV-2 particles are about 60 to 140 nanometers across, ringed by the spike proteins that give the coronaviruses their name, from the Latin corona, crown.[7] The pores in the aquarium's 2020 arrays were "all under 10 microns", about a hundred times wider than the virus. The difference matters because a particle's signal falls with the cube of the ratio of its size to the hole's: a particle 100 nanometers across, passing through a hole 10 micrometers wide and as long, would change the resistance by about one part in a million, while an opening of 300 nanometers would register it as a dip of several percent.[8] The design relied on overlap: each array was to slide across a partner array, and where two holes partly overlapped they would leave a smaller opening, with "the potential to form juxtaposed true nanopores", the juxtapores of the company's sliding occlusion method.[2]

The badge

Two other badges of Epic Quest Bio also mark when a member arrived. "EQBio-original" marks players who signed up "when it was still Epic Quest Biotechnology and way too early as an experiment to really take off", and "Epic Quest mailing list" those who "saw a promo in 2021 that said 'join our epic quest', and you did!"[1]

Context

The pandemic made a public practice of reading a city's sewage. A 2020 study in New Haven, Connecticut, found that the amount of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in sewage sludge rose one to four days before hospital admissions did.[9] The company's 2022 statement of its goal, Our North Star, puts molecular detectors "in air handling systems, toilets, and drains".[10]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c "Company records". Molecular Reality Corporation. October 2026.
  2. ^ a b Quartermaster (March 29, 2026). "The Line". EQBio-OS.
  3. ^ a b c Kemmishtree (March 29, 2026). "(no subject)". EQBio-OS.
  4. ^ Arima, A. (2018). "Selective detections of single-viruses using solid-state nanopores". Scientific Reports 8: 16305. doi:10.1038/s41598-018-34665-4.
  5. ^ Taniguchi, M. (2021). "Combining machine learning and nanopore construction creates an artificial intelligence nanopore for coronavirus detection". Nature Communications 12: 3726. doi:10.1038/s41467-021-24001-2.
  6. ^ Ferris Calloway (October 12, 2026). "Notes on demonpore, Two Pore Guys and Roswell". Debye Length.
  7. ^ Zhu, N. (2020). "A novel coronavirus from patients with pneumonia in China, 2019". New England Journal of Medicine 382 (8): 727. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa2001017.
  8. ^ DeBlois, R. W.; Bean, C. P. (1970). "Counting and sizing of submicron particles by the resistive pulse technique". Review of Scientific Instruments 41 (7): 909. doi:10.1063/1.1684724.
  9. ^ Peccia, J. (2020). "Measurement of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater tracks community infection dynamics". Nature Biotechnology 38 (10): 1164.
  10. ^ "Our North Star: Utility-Scale Molecular Sensing". Molecular Reality Corporation. 2022.
Retrieved from "https://molecularreality.com/wiki/CoronaPore"
Last edited 5 hours ago by Translocation event