ERI: Biologically Guided Optimization of Gamma-Irradiation for Mitigating Pharmaceutical Pollution

Many pharmaceuticals end up in the environment or in drinking water even after treatment at wastewater processing plants. This project will focus on estrogens and progestins, hormones that are used for birth control, menopausal hormone therapy, and cancer treatment. The project will conduct experiments to study how estrogens and progestins degrade when exposed to gamma radiation. The degradation products will be analyzed using a combination of spectroscopic and computational methods. Possible toxicological effects of the degradation products will be tested using zebrafish. Project outcomes will help scientists and engineers find ways to improve water quality and improve human and environmental health. The project will engage high school and undergraduate students in the research. It will also provide elementary school students with lessons about the proper disposal of pharmaceuticals and household waste. This project will focus on the degradation of endocrine disrupting active pharmaceutical ingredients (API EDC) in wastewater streams using γ-radiation. Multiple estrogens and progestins will be exposed to γ-radiation under a variety of head gas conditions to determine the most effective degradation methodology. The degradation mechanism and thermodynamics will be studied using a combination of experimental analytical techniques, including mass spectrometry, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, infrared spectroscopy, and vibrational circular dichroism, and small molecule ab initio quantum chemical calculations. The proposed quantum chemical computational work will expand absolute configuration analysis for vibrational circular dichroism using artificial intelligence (AI) and accurate calculations of radical based transition state energy barriers for large compounds. Degradation efficiency will be measured not only by the percentage of material that is degraded but also by the resulting biochemical changes in exposed zebrafish embryos. The biochemical changes in the zebrafish embryos will be quantified using a quantum cascade laser discrete frequency infrared imaging system coupled with AI classification of zebrafish organs and sub-organ regions. The understanding of toxicant degradation, toxicant degradation product toxicology, and zebrafish animal model infrared spectroscopic imaging resulting from this work will allow for application to other, non-estrogen and non-progestin, API EDCs, pesticides, and manufacturing effluent and advance biotechnology research by providing foundational data for a new imaging method, infrared imaging, for a well-established animal model, zebrafish. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria. NSF Award ID: 2553086 | Program: 01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT | Principal Investigator: Matthew Confer | Institution: University of South Alabama, MOBILE, AL | Award Amount: $200,000 View on NSF Award Search: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2553086 View on Research.gov: https://www.research.gov/awardapi-service/v1/awards/2553086.html