Dutch researchers find way to identify chemical weapon use with plants
University of Amsterdam researcher Mirjam de Bruin-Hoegée and her team have found a way to use plants to determine whether chemical weapons were used in an attack. Their method can find evidence of chlorine gas attacks even months after the fact, the University of Amsterdam reported.
Chemical weapons are banned by the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, but they are still used. The Assad regime in Syria used chlorine gas on its citizens in 2018, Russia poisoned political opponents Aleksei Navalny and Sergei Skripal with the nerve agent Novichok, and the terrorist organization Islamic State made its own mustard gas in 2015, for example. But while the effects of chemical attacks are obvious, it is often impossible to unambiguously prove that chemical weapons were used and that traces found don’t have a more innocent source, such as household beach or swimming pool chlorine.
But De Bruin-Hoegée and coworkers at the van ‘t Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences (University of Amsterdam) and TNO have found a method to do just that. Using high-resolution mass spectrometric analysis and machine learning techniques, they were able to identify biomarkers that reveal the use of chlorine gas in common plants like green spire, stinging nettle, and feathergrass. The plants carried tell-tale signs of the chemical weapon even months after exposure.
De Bruin-Hoegée and her colleagues carried out mini poison attacks on the plants with chlorine gas, mustard gas, sarin, and Novichok. “We found similar adducts in plants as in humans: the substances bind in the same way to comparable proteins, so you can easily transfer the methods for researching blood to plant proteins,” she told NRC. According to the researcher, the method will considerably expand the toolbox of detectives investigating chemical weapons.
De Bruin-Hoegée received her Ph.D. cum laude from the University of Amsterdam for this research. She will continue to work as an analytical chemist at TNO, she told NRC. “We want to develop these techniques even further, Hopefully, it will have a deterrent effect that we can demonstrate more and more.”
