Such proteins could be incorporated into detectors, which might resemble smoke detectors and could be widely deployed as early-warning alarms, weapons monitors or in the decontamination process after an attack. The detector could not only warn of the presence of the nerve agent, but act as a continuous monitor of its levels.
Led by Associate Professor of Biochemistry Homme Hellinga, Ph.D., the researchers reported their achievement in a paper published online May 17, 2004 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Besides Hellinga, other co-authors of the PNAS paper were Malin Allert, Shahir Rizk and Loren Looger. Their research is sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.