Botanicals as Chemical Warfare Agent Indicators

"We developed a super-sensitive technique called Multi-Photon Detection (MPD). MPD has been used to improve the sensitivity of protein detection, including immunodiagnostics and proteomics. The development of MPD enabled methods for detecting a subattomole/ml amounts of proteins has been documented. The detection of the differentially displayed proteins, i.e. elucidation of promising set of the markers will be the focus of the Phase I effort. We will use the proprietary MPD enhanced differentialprotein display (dd-PROT/MPD). In Phase II we will develop a panel of MPD enhanced immunoassays (IA/MPD) targeting several of these markers. We will then extend this method to the use of MPD enhanced protein microarrays (P-chips/MPD). The proposed studyon proteomic responses of maize to organophoshate pesticides has clear relevance for the use of maize as a chemical warfare indicator species, but it also is useful for agricultural studies on maize improvment. The market for improved varieties of maizeis very large."