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Nucleic Acid-Based Biosensors for the Detection of DNA Damage
Citation:
ROGERS, K. R. AND R. K. Gary. Nucleic Acid-Based Biosensors for the Detection of DNA Damage. Chapter 6, Marco Mascini and Ilaria Palchetti (ed.), Nucleic Acid Biosensors for Environmenetal Pollution Monitoring. RSC Publishing, Cambridge, Uk, , 99-120, (2011).
Impact/Purpose:
The National Exposure Research Laboratory′s (NERL) Human Exposure and Atmospheric Sciences Division (HEASD) conducts research in support of EPA′s mission to protect human health and the environment. HEASD′s research program supports Goal 1 (Clean Air) and Goal 4 (Healthy People) of EPA′s strategic plan. More specifically, our division conducts research to characterize the movement of pollutants from the source to contact with humans. Our multidisciplinary research program produces Methods, Measurements, and Models to identify relationships between and characterize processes that link source emissions, environmental concentrations, human exposures, and target-tissue dose. The impact of these tools is improved regulatory programs and policies for EPA.
Description:
Monitoring the environment for the presence of toxic compounds is not only required for cleanup of previously contaminated land and water, but is important for preventing future contamination and managing risks to human health and the environment. Identification and measurement of specific compounds in the environment that are known to have toxic effects has historically been the strategy used 10 accomplish this task. The measurement of compounds in environmental media currently involves several steps such as sampling. transport to the lab, extraction, sample clean-up and analysis by instrumental techniques. Each of these steps requires time, effort and expense. This is not a trivial task considering that there are about 80,000 chemicals that are currently being used and more than 1,000 being added to the market every year. In addition to the parent compounds that may be released, there are also a vast number of compounds resulting from the decomposition of original pollutants. Given that only a small fraction of the vast number of compounds that contaminate the environment from anthropogenic processes are toxicologically well described, determining and managing potential risks by identifying and monitoring specific compounds is a considerable undertaking.