URoL:ASC: Biosensors for Field Detection of Aqueous Heavy Metals: A Collaboration with Native American Communities

Socio-economically challenged communities have borne the highly disproportionate brunt of environmental degradation associated with extractive industries, especially those associated with production of nuclear weapons and energy production. Dispersal of toxic heavy metals into natural waterways as well as agricultural and domestic water sources is accelerating, especially in arid regions where water resources are scarce.

Water users, researchers, and remediation efforts rely on highly specialized and costly centralized laboratory facilities to quantify toxic heavy metals in streams, irrigation canals and domestic water sources. Such analyses are not amenable to home or field-use by either trained or lay personnel, both of which desire access to easy-to-use, highly sensitive methods for field-based detection.

This award will develop accessible biosensing systems for convenient detection of toxic heavy metals without the need for centralized laboratory facilities. In doing so, it will benefit from end-to-end consultation with water resource management personnel on critical contaminant sensing needs, efficacy of approaches, and successful deployment strategies.

The dire threat posed by highly toxic contaminants in these communities provides a compelling context for recruiting students from some of the most under-represented groups to participate in the research. This project will provide a comprehensive training, education, and outreach program to recruit, train, retain, and return indigenous and economically disadvantaged scientific and engineering talent to benefit their communities.

Decades of uranium extraction have left a toxic legacy of heavy metal contamination in water sources in Native American and Indo-Hispanic communities in the arid Southwest. There is a critical need for new technologies that require minimal technical training and can be used to rapidly screen for the presence of these toxicants in the home or the field.

Over the past 30-years, in vitro selection methods have been used to generate DNA sequences that bind with high affinity and selectivity to many heavy metal ion species. These reagents can form the basis for highly selective biosensors, but they have not yet been translated for routine application in highly contaminated communities and sites in the vicinity of highly contaminated abandoned mines.

This award will develop a simple-to-use, yet highly effective, biosensing technologies for field-use based on these reagents by (i) taking into consideration the guidance from their ultimate user communities, and (ii) by implementing fundamental understanding and innovations garnered through a number of previous grants funded under the auspices of the NSF’s Big Idea to Understand the Rules of Life. This multidisciplinary, multi-institutional, user-directed research project will apply the findings and innovations of these previous fundamental research efforts to develop field-deployable solutions for critical problems of water security in Native American, minority, and low-resource communities.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.