R&D Focus Areas
Three research focus areas were selected where the discovery and application of environmental biomarkers may provide early, pre-symptomatic indicators of disease and damage.
Predicting Ecosystem Change and Damage
Like complex organisms, ecosystems often display a progression of damage from environmental insults that may result in the disappearance of key species. Often genomic information for constituent organisms in ecocommunities have not been, or cannot be, obtained. This is especially the case when microbial communities are the target of assessment. PNNL is addressing these scientific challenges with the intent to develop suites of molecular level biomarkers that can quantitatively describe biodiversity, system behavior and multiple stressors across levels, in the absence of genomic information. Our goal is to identify biomolecular signatures associated with specific functions within an ecosystem, and build a predictive capability that will recognize early warning signs of ecosystem stress and damage.
Systems Toxicology of Nanomaterials
Because of the increasing production and use of nanomaterials and our lack of knowledge related to acute and chronic health effects, PNNL will build capabilities to facilitate understanding the properties of nanomaterials that lead to toxicity and advance the field of biomarker discovery for environmental respiratory tract diseases associated with exposure to nanomaterials. The integrated capability, including the tools and scientific expertise, will help us predict toxicity of nanomaterials with the intent of guiding development, commercialization, and regulation of safe nanomaterials.
Response to Biological Agents
There is an increasing need for biomaker-based detection systems to protect against potential threats. PNNL will focus on biomarkers of response to biological agents in order to gather intelligence on dissemination of infectious agents and to discriminate between the truly affected and the worried well during an exposure event. Novel screening techniques for biosignature discovery, discovery of metabolite and protein signatures and monitoring biosignatures in live cells in real-time will be near-term objectives. Parallel developments in novel sensor platforms will become the deployment avenue for qualified biomarkers.
