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Researchers from the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at CU Boulder have won a $1 million grant from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency for research that could enable next-generation detectors for weapons of mass destruction.

Conventional screening methods for these weapons’ chemical components often rely on bulky, slow and costly lab instruments, while superior enzyme-based sensors remain out of reach, said Professor Dan Schwartz, the principal investigator.

That’s because enzyme-based tools would require the enzymes be affixed to a surface, rather than free-floating in liquid, and these immobilized or contained enzymes often become less functional or fail altogether, Schwartz said. Enzymes could be a key component of effective sensors because they have evolved to detect their targets with unparalleled precision, and since they naturally accelerate chemical reactions, they can be used to detect even tiny amounts of a substance.

Science has proven that some enzymes can be immobilized and remain active. Blood glucose meters used by diabetics are a common example of this technology in action.

“People have, through serendipity, successfully found ways to immobilize a few particular enzymes and still have them function, and those few examples are used very advantageously in certain technologies,” Schwartz said. “But people don’t really understand why immobilization works sometimes and why it fails other times.”

This project aims to answer that “why” by providing a thorough understanding of how individual enzyme molecules behave when confined to a surface, and how tethered molecules that stay functional could be harnessed for sensitive tools to identify chemical threats.

As the research sheds new light on the subject, defense agencies aim to use this newfound information to integrate enzymes into portable electronic devices and potentially recycle or reuse these sometimes costly catalysts.

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency, part of the U.S. Department of Defense, plans to use the project’s discoveries to fight terrorism and nuclear proliferation, but it could benefit a number of other industries from health care to commerce to renewable energy, Schwartz said.

Schwartz will work with Assistant Professor Joel Kaar of CU Boulder and Luke Lavis of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute on the three-year, collaborative project.

“No two of these labs could do it without the third,” Schwartz said. “Each of the three labs is contributing unique pieces of the puzzle to make this work.”