Event Date
⭐️ Presented by the Center for the Advancement of Multicultural Perspectives on Science (CAMPOS)
Marie Heffern
Associate Professor, Chemistry
"Probing Metal Dynamics in the Extracellular Environment for Disease Biomarkers"
The context in which a metal resides within a biological environment significantly influences its activity in function. Recent years have seen a rise in tools for monitoring metal ions and have illuminated the diversity in metal speciation in biology, but many of these tools are focused on probing metals within cells and tissues. The state-of-the-art methods for assessing metal status in extracellular fluids such as blood plasma focus either on absolute quantitation or evaluate a limited number of metal- containing species. While these methods have offered important insight into extreme cases of metal deficiency in overload, subtle imbalances are more challenging to diagnose and understand. This talk will describe our efforts to expand and elucidate metal speciation and its dynamics in the extracellular space, specifically in the blood plasma and the interstitial space. We will discuss molecular-level investigations of extracellular biomolecules and their interactions with metal ions, the development of tools to selectively probe extracellular metal biology, and the impacts our research can have in discovering biomarkers that link metal micronutrient homeostasis, diet, and metabolic disorders.