NSF Award
9461636
The goal of this program is to develop a compact, low cost accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) system dedicated to measuring ultra-low quantities of carbon-14 and tritium in labeled biological samples. The instrument will have a sensitivity 2-3 orders of magnitude higher than that of liquid scintillation decay counters and will allow the measurement of carbon-14 concentrations at or below naturally occurring levels in modern samples. The labeling of biologically active molecules with carbon-14 and/or tritium is a powerful and widely used technique for the study of molecular kinetics. The high sensitivity afforded by AMS allows the fate of environmental carcinogens, mutagens and toxins to be studied on the molecular level at extremely low levels of exposure. Existing AMS systems utilize large, expensive tandem accelerators and are generally not available to the biologists and biomedical researchers. Newton Scientific, Incorporated (NSI) proposes to develop an innovative low energy AMS instrument designed specifically for operation in a biological research laboratory. In the proposed Phase 1 effort, NSI will evaluate and optimize the performance capabilities of a low energy AMS system for biological samples and develop a system engineering design for construction and testing in Phase 2. The availability of this instrument will greatly expand the number and type of biological studies which can be conducted using l4C and tritium radiolabels.
