Dr. Richard Tarkka, Department of Chemistry, recently received an $18,383 grant to study nanosensors for detection of aquatic toxins.
The grant is funded by the National Institutes of Health through the National Center for Research Resources, Biomedical Research Infrastructure Networks, and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
Tarkka will be working with Bob Gawley, from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, and several undergraduate students.
The overall goal of this project is to use combinatorial synthesis to develop fluorescent chemosensors for saxitoxin, a marine toxin that is produced by bacteria or red tides. It can enter the food chain through shellfish or finfish transvectors. Consumption by humans causes paralytic shellfish poisoning.
This project will help the State of Arkansas prevent outbreaks of parlytic shellfish poisonings in its waterways.
It is estimated that saxitoxin and related marine toxins cause economic losses to the fishing industry, public health, and tourism of $40,000,000 annually. Mouse bioassay is the most common method for screening seafood for saxitoxin. There is considerable interest in developing new assay techniques that are rapid, ethical and economical.
The objective for the summer of 2004 is confirming that Still?s encoding methods will be an appropriate way to determine the sequences of amino acids in our chemosensors. After that, encoded oligopeptide libraries will be synthesized, exposed to saxitoxin, and screened for binding.
