DNA test detects low-level uranium

Yi Lu and his colleagues, who already showed how synthetic DNA molecules could be used to detect toxic lead at very low levels, have now turned the technique to detecting radioactive uranium in tiny amounts.

Their DNA sensor can detect traces of uranium contamination nearly 3,000 times lower than the level considered hazardous to human health, the UI chemistry professor said recently. The technology eventually might be contained in a fast and easily portable on-site testing system for uranium.

Also on this date

• Rantoul: Not your father's village
• Affordable housing key to Rantoul as migration destination
• Constant turnover forces school district to redefine itself
• Motorists begin sliding off road during ice storm
• Officials required to report possible child abuse, neglect
• Man dies after SUV hits his buggy from behind
• Handgun fired at vehicle
• Cancer researcher charged with raising up Carle's new program
• Danville doctors take voyage to Antarctica
• Obituaries

» More