Technical Report for DE-FG02-03ER46029 Sugar-Coated PPEs, Novel Nanomaterials and Sensing Modules for Disease and Bioterrorism Related Threats

Technical Report · Wed Aug 27 00:00:00 EDT 2003

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/813548· OSTI ID:813548

Bunz, Uwe

The detection and sensing of biological warfare agents (Ricin, Anthrax toxin), of disease agents (cholera, botulinum and tetanus toxins, influenza virus etc) and of biologically active species is important for national security and disease control. A premiere goal would be the simple colorimetric or fluorimetric detection of such toxins by a dipstick test. It would be desirable to sense 5,000-10,000 toxin molecules, i.e. 10-100 fg of a toxin contained 1-5 mL of sample. Fluorescent conjugated polymers should be particularly interesting in this regard, because they can carry multiple identical and/or different recognition units. Such an approach is particularly valuable for the detection of lectin toxins, because these bind to oligomeric carbohydrate displays. Lectins bind multivalently to sugars, i.e. several covalently connected sugar moieties have to be exposed to the lectin at the same time to obtain binding. The requirement of multivalency of the lectin-sugar interactions should allow a very sensitive detection of lectins with sugar coated conjugated polymers in an agglutination type assay, where the fluorescence of the PPEs disappears upon binding to the lectins. High molecular weights of the used PPEs would mean high sensitivity. Herein we present our progress towards that goal up to date.

• Research Organization: University of South Carolina (US)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC) (US)
• DOE Contract Number: FG02-03ER46029
• OSTI ID: 813548
• Report Number(s): Final Report; TRN: US200506%%196
• Resource Relation: Other Information: PBD: 27 Aug 2003
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEFENSE
36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
37 INORGANIC
ORGANIC
PHYSICAL AND ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY
98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL PROTECTION
ANTIGEN-ANTIBODY REACTIONS
BIOLOGICAL WARFARE AGENTS
CARBOHYDRATES
CHOLERA
DETECTION
DISEASES
FLUORESCENCE
INFLUENZA
LECTINS
MOLECULAR WEIGHT
NATIONAL SECURITY
POLYMERS
SACCHARIDES
SACCHAROSE
SENSITIVITY
TETANUS
TOXINS
CONJUGATED POLYMERS
SENSORS
BIOTERRORIST THREATS
MICROSTRUCTURING