Acknowledgements: We thank NSF-PREM grant # DMR-0611539 for their generous funding.

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Department of Chemistry, Jackson State University, Jackson, MS, USA

Acknowledgements: Dr. Ray thanks NSF-PREM grant # DMR-0611539 and NIH-SCORE grant # S06GM 008047 and DOD grant # W 912HZ-06-C-0057 for their generous funding

We have demonstrated that real time evolution of intermediates of colloidal nanocrystals can be fully accessed during the synthesis of anisotropic shaped gold nanoparticles.  Our experimental data provide unique and convincing information for understanding the growth mechanisms of how the shape control works for gold anisotropic nanocrystals

(Published in Chem. Phys. Lett., 2010, 487, 88-91 )

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Jhansi Rani Kalluri, Tahir Arbneshi, Sadia Afrin Khan, Adria Neely, Perry Candice, Birsen Varisli, Marla Washington, Shardae McAfee, Britinia Robinson, Santanu Banerjee, Anant Kumar Singh, Dulal Senapati, and Paresh Chandra Ray
Department of Chemistry, Jackson State University, Jackson, MS, USA

The contamination of drinking water with arsenic poses a threat to global health. As many as 140 million people worldwide may have been exposed to drinking water with arsenic contamination levels higher than the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline of 10 ppb. Driven by need, we have demonstrated a label-free, selective colorimetric assay and highly sensitive DLS assay for 3 ppt arsenic recognition in aqueous solution. The experimental results show that arsenic can be detected at the ppt level quickly and accurately without any tagging, and with excellent discrimination against other heavy metals.

(Published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition 2009, 48, 9668-9671)
Acknowledgements: Dr. Ray thanks NSF-PREM (grant no. DMR-0611539), CREST (grant no. HRD-0833178), HBCU-UP (grant no. 0811638), and DOD HPCDNM (grant no. W912HZ-07-C-0073) for their generous support of this research

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JSU-UCSB PREM summer school participants from Jackson, MS local high school published their research finding at IEEE Sensor Journal. The IEEE Sensors Journal is a peer-reviewed journal devoted to sensors and sensing phenomena. It is published by the IEEE Sensors Council, which consists of 23 IEEE Technical Societies with a combined membership of over 260,000. In this paper we have reported development and evaluation of a miniaturized, inexpensive and battery operated ultra-sensitive nanomaterial based fluorescence resonance energy transfer (NSET) probe (as shown in Figure 1) for screening microbial pathogens DNA and chemical toxins at high sensitivity and selectivity. Though the publication demonstrated only for water sample, this team believed that their probe provides a useful starting point for the development of practical nanosensor for screening of toxin from wide range of biological, toxicological and environmental samples that require an assay for biological and chemical toxin detection.

Figure 1: Photograph of the minimized NSET probe box, connected with labtop computer for data acquisition.

Photograph of four PREM Summer School K12 Participants (top two rows), graduate student and mentor (bottom rows) – coming soon.

Contamination of the environment with mercury has been an important concern throughout the world for decades. Human exposure to high Hg levels can harm the brain, heart, kidneys, lungs, and immune system of people of all ages. Driven by the need to detect trace amount of mercury from environmental samples, here we present miniaturized, inexpensive and battery operated ultra-sensitive gold nanoparticle based nanomaterial surface energy transfer (NSET) probe for screening mercury levels in contaminated soil, water and fish which has excellent sensitivity (2 ppt) and selectivity for Hg(II) over competing analytes, with the largest fluorescence enhancement to date for sensing Hg(II) in environmental samples (1100-fold). The sensitivity of our probe to detect mercury level in soil, water and fish is about 2-3 orders of magnitude higher than the EPA standard limit. We demonstrated that our probe is suitable to screen amount of mercury in different commercial fish, shellfish and water from different sources.

This represents the first nanoparticle-based fluorescence assay for probing single-strand DNA nuclease activity. Our simple assay with extremely high sensitivity will make it widely applicable and highly useful for convenient characterization of DNA/RNA cleavage reactions Given the simplicity, speed, and sensitivity of this approach, the described methodology could easily be extended to a high throughput format and become a new method of choice in HIV proteases and matrix metalloproteases (MMP) as well as the proteins involved in cellular apoptosis

(Published in J. Phys. Chem. B, as a letter, J. Phys. Chem. B, 2006, 110, 20745).

Department of Chemistry, Jackson State University, Jackson, MS, USA, 39217
Acknowledgment: We thank the NSF-PREM Grant #DMR-0611539 for generous funding. We also thank Mississippi Center for Super Computer Resource (MCSR), University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS, for the generous use of their computational facilities.

One of the long-standing challenges is the development of organic compounds, which exhibits a large value of the 2PA cross section at wavelength(s) above 700 nm. We have designed a series of D-A Zn-porphyrin aggregates that possess exceptionally large Two Photon Absorption (TPA) cross sections at the desirable fundamental wavelengths of 1.1-1.5 m, which can be highly suitable candidates for the applications in biological imaging and photon dynamic therapy.

(published in J. Phys. Chem. A, J. Phys. Chem. A, 2006, 110, 12342).