Project Details
Preparation of anti-Arsenic based Antibodies and Development of ELISA for Arsenic Analysis in the Environment
Applicant
Sathrugnan Karthikeyan, Ph.D.
Subject Area
Analytical Chemistry
Term
from 2006 to 2007
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 32356415
Arsenic is commonly found throughout the environment in a wide variety of chemical species that vary in toxicity and mobility. Humans are exposed to a considerable amount of arsenic through drinking water and food and to some extent, through contaminated air depending on geographical areas. As a result of these health concerns, arsenic research has grown steadily in recent years in accord with the need to understand the occurrence, distribution, and mobilization of arsenic in the environment and to develop cost-effective treatment technologies.New instrumental techniques are being developed at a rapid rate in an effort to produce analytical methods with lower detection limits, shorter temporal resolution, and increased selectivity with the goal of enhancing our understanding of fate and transport of arsenic. In general, a field deployable instrument can be of better choice since it enables us to do real-time analysis. Immunoassay technology offers a new approach and has significant advantages over the traditional instrument-intensive methods of metals analysis. They are remarkably quick, easy, high throughput and feasible for field analysis. The aim of the present research is to prepare antibodies against arsenic species. This will be used in development of Enzyme-linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) to allow easy and cheap analysis of these species in different samples, e.g. in water samples in Asia.
DFG Programme
Research Fellowships