Vanderbilt researchers use controllable proteins to detect bioattacks
Many sensors rely on proteins that bind to suspected agents; a problem develops, however, when the biological weapon is new and unknown; controllable proteins, optimistic researcher say, will be to biowarfare detection what transistors were to computing
One established method of detecting chemical and biological weapons is to produce proteins that can bind to them. Once bound, it is easy to develop a sensor system that can detect the change, and readers will recall having read about many of these efforts in our pages. Yet what can be done about new and unknown biological agents? Researchers at the Single Protein Actuation by Real-Time Transduction of Affinity in Nanospace (SPARTAN) project at Vanderbilt University believe they have the answer: controllable proteins.
“The controllable protein is the equivalent of the transistor in microelectronics,” said professor John Wikswo, pointing out that the promise of computing was not realized until millions of transistors could be combined. “Similarly, the true potential of controllable proteins will be realized when we can combine them into large arrays that can be dynamically tuned to respond to a wide variety of different agents.”
Although research is still at an early stage, many of the neccesary tools to create controllable proteins already exist: the capability to design and fabricate tailored proteins; the ability to use optical spectroscopy to monitor the shape of individual proteins; and assorted advances in nanophotonics, biophotonics, micro- and nano-fluidics and modern control theory. The goal of the first phase of the project is to prove that it is possible to reversibly control the conformation of a single protein in real time. In the second phase the researchers will attempt to incorporate real-time control of protein conformation into novel technologies for the detection of chemical or biological threat agents.
The research is being funded with a $1.3 million grant from DARPA and includes researchers from the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Tennessee Space Institute, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
-read more in this university news release
