Researchers at Penn State might have found a better way to track fine molecular matter by using techniques similar to how groceries are tracked at the supermarket.

Genes or other fine atomic substances are hard to trace by individual strands and determine their characteristics, but Christine Keating, assistant professor of chemistry, devised a way to track molecular material using microscopic metallic barcodes.

But the barcode technique is not a complete replacement for other methods. "We're trying to increase the number of tools for analyses," Keating said.

Sheila Peņa, a graduate assistant who worked on the project, said, "We can take them, and use them for any area when you have to keep track of large numbers. You can use them for many applications."

The barcodes have to be created first, and they can be a variety of metals. Each has its own unique pattern of stripes. These stripes are the color the metals reflect in blue light, and the stripes vary in length.

To make the barcodes more specific, each is tagged with capture materials, which will have a later substance bond to the structure.

"Then we can mix all of the different barcodes together and expose them to a solution of whatever we want to detect," Peņa said. "Then we determine whatever is in solution by exposing the barcodes to a molecule that is fluorescently tagged. We use the barcodes to tell what the capture chemical is."

The molecule introduced will attach itself to specific capture chemicals and it is viewed in white light.

Observing the barcodes requires different types of light. Looking at the solution in blue light will tell the positioning of molecules and what they are. After the fluorescent molecule is added and the same solution is viewed again, only the barcodes that bonded with the molecule appear.

Keating and her associates recently conducted a successful experiment distinguishing human and rabbit antibodies using the barcode technique.

"The importance of the paper is that we made the striped particles and we can tell them apart," Keating said.

This project is being worked on in collaboration with SurroMed, Inc., a biotechnology company in California. Its chief technical officer is a former Penn State professor, Michael Natan.

For this venture to work to its maximum efficiency, "You really need to make the 10,000 (metallic particles) for profiling and make them really well," Keating said.

One of the hopes is that it could be possible to have personalized medicine become a reality. Some people cannot have certain medicines because they have side effects or they simply do not work.

By being able to observe thousands of strands of genetic material at one time and track their different properties, "You'll learn how they'll respond to certain types of treatments," Keating said.

More work needs to be done such as designing software to be able to read thousands of different barcodes, but the initial signs are encouraging.

"We're so excited because based on the way we prepared and the way we're able to see the stripes in the microscopes, they can be used in enormous numbers," Keating said.