Feature: Biochemistry on a microchip

Scientists hold a graphic representation of a computer chip embedded with proteins. Members of the research team include (left to right) lab technician Jennifer Sturgis, professors J. Paul Robinson, Rashid Bashir, Michael Ladisch and Arun Bhunia, and graduate student Rafael Gomez, who is holding one of the biochips. (photo by Tom Campbell)

A professor from the Purdue School of Pharmacy makes a long, difficult journey to a remote village in Nepal. She is a medicinal folklorist, and she is there because, for generations, people in the villages in the shadow of the Himalayas have been making a tea from a local plant to treat severe stomach disorders. Although she is tired from the long truck ride to the village, she has her guide help her find the wild shrub that produces the leaves. She checks several of the bushes and finds that some of them produce an interesting biological compound. She discovers that the compound is only found in the newly sprouted leaves, and even then, it isn't in every plant. But once again, the folklore proves to have some validityher handheld computer indicates that something in these leaves apparently reacts in some way with the cells of stomach cancer tumors.

A Mexican environmental scientist is doing a routine check of the trees and plants in an area that is to be cleared for farming. It's a mundane task that he has repeated hundreds of days before. Today, he is investigating beetles. He tweezers one up from the ground and places it on the sensor pad. Suddenly, the alert light on his handheld computer flashes and a bell chimes. The device has collected something important. He could press a button and electronically submit his sample to the scientists at his office, but instead he runs back to his truck. He wants to see for himself the looks on their faces when they realize what he has found. No one will be clear-cutting this patch of forestthe beetles in there are worth more than gold.

A farmer is working on a spreadsheet at his desk when his computer announces an outbreak of brown rot. He closes his spreadsheet and looks at a graph his computer has plotted of the intensity of the outbreak over the past 12 hours. Not much there, but what is there is apparently spreading. He makes a note to himself to put down a fungicide the next day. Just to be safe, he tells himself, "I'd better do the whole acre."

These are three fictional, hypothetical examples of what might be possible if research under way at Purdue University comes to fruition. Nature has created a vast library of biochemicals, but humans have harvested just a few for use in drugs and pesticides. To help quickly sort through this world of macromolecules, scientists at Purdue are creating the first biochips, mating silicon computer chips and biological protein assays.