Connecting health, environment and security: The Analyst and the science of detection

Each new challenge in detection is accompanied by scientific issues that may be limited by:

 • The ability to adapt an existing assay to a particular application

 • No suitable existing assay method

 • The magnitude of the number of measurements required

 • The speed with which a result is required in order to be useful

 • The complexity of the sample or sample environment

Thus, the science of detection creates the dual challenge of needing to improve current analytical methods through some novel approach, and making innovative discoveries that will forge the way to generically new methods of analysis. This exciting innovation is now being created at the interface between disciplines, underpinned by fundamental studies and creating an interdisciplinary community that arguably attracts and includes some of the most talented and respected research leaders in the world.

Is this a new revolution or just a 21st Century emergence (a ‘coming out’) of a previously active, exciting, but undercover field? Early issues of the journal contained reports on methods for the detection of adulterants in food (alum in bread flour, dairy products and alcoholic beverages all featured regularly) and detection of toxins in water. Whilst routine analysis in today's terms, these were issues of significance in the 19th century. 100 years ago, the journal published a report highlighting the role analytical chemists play in aiding medical professionals.¹ However it wasn't until the 1980s that the journal published its first articles on analytical science for the diagnosis of diseases (genetic diseases² and herpes³) and a glucose biosensor.⁴ The term ‘security’ (as we know it today) did not appear until 2004 and first appeared in papers reporting the detection of explosives using ion mobility spectrometry,⁵ although a chip based CE-microsystem⁶ and a field test⁷, both for the detection of explosives, were published in 2002.

So, why is detection now so openly important to the scientific community and the wider community (e.g. issues of disease detection and diagnosis, security aspects)? The solving of the genome and recent advances in miniaturization of electronic circuits have provided the technological capability to utilize new approaches to analysis. Driven by the Human Genome Project requiring determination of 3000M bases in the genome, the analytical community was faced with an urgent need to make analysis and detection more versatile and higher yielding. The community responded with the birth of a detection chip technology that epitomises a dynamic multidisciplinary research effort which has focussed on:

 • Novel materials and reagents

  - Biochemical origin; tailor-made synthesis of recognition systems

 • Instrumental advances

  - Application adapted; simple operation, single tasking not multi-tasking

 • Parallel approaches

  - Multiple signals with different information together providing greater detail

The identification and quantification of chemical, biochemical and biological species has been termed Detection Science or Biodetection where it applies specifically to biochemical matrices, but the technologies employed or being developed will be more than familiar to the analytical chemist. Indeed, it is clear that a great deal of the work being performed under this umbrella does not just involve the traditional analytical scientist and, moreover, developments in the area are not just published necessarily in analytical journals.

The field has become so critical to the maintenance of our quality of life and our safety that the investment in cutting edge research encompasses fundamental aspects of the study of new approaches from physics and engineering to applications in very diverse areas involving an astounding array of sample types. Examples lie in accurate identification of diseases on minuscule amounts of blood etc., single molecule detection, and environmental monitoring involving macro to nano-sized samples. The emphasis is sometimes on the specific detection and quantification of a single entity, in a “NO-false positive/negative” fashion in a highly rapid, low cost, and highly sensitive format.

The world also has other concerns that are driving the need for detection: September 11 and subsequent events have highlighted a further technical problem, presented by the modern spectre of both chemical and biological terrorism, where enormous challenges rest with respect to high speed, selectivity and sensitivity. Other perhaps less-demanding but nevertheless important problems reside in detection in the food/agriculture, industrial processing and forensic/legal sectors exposing the value of biological and chemical sensors and bioelectronics in the detection of bioagents and in diagnoses.

Is The Analyst responding to the emergence of this new paradigm? Is it ready to embrace this new interdisciplinary direction with an effort to attract those who contribute to this exciting field to add to its more traditional basis of analytical science? There are many who would argue that the journal has already covered this area in its long history, but the plain fact is that at present much of the contemporary work is not being innovated just by analytical chemists.

With this in mind, the journal's subtitle has been revised

 

The Analyst

Interdisciplinary detection science

 

The scope of the journal has also been redefined to make it more accessible to those involved in detection science; researchers who may not consider themselves analytical scientists, but whose work focusses heavily on analytical methods and techniques.

The Analyst publishes cutting edge interdisciplinary research that presents a significant advance in fundamental theory, practice or application of (bio)analytical and detection science. The scope of the journal encompasses research into the detection, identification and quantification of chemical, biochemical and biomedical species and events; novel approaches to the study of atomic and molecular species and the development of new technologies to detect and gain chemical information with greater speed, throughput and sensitivity.

The journal encourages submission of research on novel assays, mass spectrometry, atomic and molecular spectroscopy, electrochemistry, optics, acoustics, sensors, imaging techniques, miniaturisation, chromatography and electrophoresis, sampling and sample handling, chemometrics/statistics, and all other areas related to (bio)analysis and detection.

Through these changes, the Editorial Board wish to emphasise the interdisciplinarity of The Analyst and highlight detection science as an important area within (bio)analytical science today. Recent issues of the journal contain research from, and arising from, collaborations between chemistry, biochemistry, biology, biotechnology, biomedical, pharmacy, environmental, physics, materials and engineering departments and disciplines. Highlighting developments in detection will enhance the journal and our aim is to provide you, our authors and readers, with a modern dynamic journal which reflects the advances in (bio)analytical and detection science today and to bring your research to a wider audience.

As a final comment it should be stressed that, as always, the emphasis of the journal is on novelty and interdisciplinarity. Analytical scientists are in a truly unique position to contribute to this emerging field because they are no strangers to interdisciplinary science and generally have an excellent portfolio of techniques and methods in mind. However, we must ensure that published work lies at the forefront of research. This means that new work must involve the introduction of significant impact with a particular emphasis on fundamentals and new applications.

Latest news: The Analyst's impact factor increases further

We are delighted to announce that The Analyst's 2005 impact factor (calculated by ISI) has risen again to its highest ever: 2.858. The Analyst maintains its position as the second highest ranked general journal publishing primary research in all areas of analytical science. In 2005, the journal received over 10 000 citations and also had the second highest immediacy index within the same area. The immediacy index is a measure of how topical and urgent the papers published by a journal are and is calculated by dividing the number of citations to articles published in a given year by the number of articles published in that year.

We would like to sincerely thank our authors for their contributions to novel (bio)analytical and detection science and our referees whose advice and expertise allow us to uphold high standards of novelty and impact, which allow the journal to go from strength to strength.

New members of the Editorial Board

We take this opportunity to introduce and welcome two new members to The Analyst Editorial Board: Professor Graham Cooks, Purdue University, USA and Professor Duncan Graham, University of Strathclyde, UK. We would also like to thank Professor Jeremy Nicholson, Imperial College, UK who has recently retired from the Editorial Board.

Plate1 Graham Cooks

Graham Cooks was born in South Africa and received a PhD at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg and also from Cambridge University, UK. He is a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Purdue University where he has spent the bulk of his career. His interests involve construction of mass spectrometers as well as their use in fundamental studies and applications. Early in his career, he contributed to the concept and implementation of MS/MS as a method of mixture analysis and to desorption ionization, especially matrix based SIMS methods. These interests led more recently to the construction of miniature ion trap mass spectrometers and their application to problems of trace chemical agent detection. His work on ionization methods has led to the ambient method of desorption electrospray ionization. Applications of this method in tissue monitoring, forensics and in pharmaceutical applications are in hand. He is also interested in molecular chirality (“handedness”) and the possible role of the amino acid serine in the biochemical origins of life. Graham Cooks is a past President of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry and is on the boards of a number of scientific journals. He has been honored by awards from the American Chemical Society and other organizations and his work is highly cited (one of the 100 most-cited chemists). He has trained 98 PhD students in analytical chemistry.

Plate2 Duncan Graham

Duncan Graham obtained his BSc Honours in Chemistry from the University of Edinburgh in 1992 and his PhD in Bioorganic Chemistry in 1996 under the direction of Prof. Tom Brown investigating the use of modified oligonucleotides to inhibit HIV. He then moved to the University of Strathclyde where he joined the group of Prof. Ewen Smith as a postdoctoral fellow to examine the use of surface enhanced resonance Raman scattering (SERRS) for DNA analysis with Zeneca Diagnostics. Breakthroughs during that period of research lead to the award of a five-year David Phillips fellowship from the BBSRC to examine the area of DNA analysis by SERRS. In 2002 he won the RSC's Analytical Grand Prix Fellowship which provided funding for another period of five years to further develop his chosen area of using synthetic chemistry to create and develop new methods of bioanalysis using optical spectroscopy. In 2004 he was awarded the SAC Silver medal for the ‘Innovative synthesis of new analytical reagents for sensitive and selective analysis’ and in 2005 he was presented with the Nexxus Young Life Scientist of Year award. He has published over 70 papers and 6 patents and was made a lecturer in 2002, promoted to senior lecturer in 2003 and to professor in 2004. In 2005 he cofounded the Strathclyde Centre for Molecular Nanometrology which operates jointly between the Departments of Chemistry and Physics and exploits the natural synergy in molecular manipulation and optical spectroscopy for the study of biological systems on a nanoscale. He is currently in the process of spinning out a company with Prof. Smith to exploit breakthroughs in molecular diagnostics by SERRS.

 

With best wishes,

 

Claire Darby

Editor

 

Elizabeth A. H. Hall

Chair, Analyst Editorial Board

 

Michael Thompson

Scientific Editor

References

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