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Mentor: Kevin Yehl, Ph.D.

PFAS (per/polyfluoroalkyl substances) encompass roughly 12,000 man-made chemicals that are incredibly stable. Because of their widespread use and slow degradation, PFAS exist practically everywhere in the environment. Concerningly, consumption of PFAS due to environmental contamination has been correlated with many illnesses, prompting research into detection methods for PFAS to limit exposure in the general population. Current analytical methods for detecting PFAS are either time consuming and expensive or lack sensitivity and selectivity. To mitigate the limitations of these current analytical methodologies, we aim to design a selective PFAS sensing platform by using SELEX (Systematic Evolution of Ligands for Exponential Enrichment). This process allows us to identify candidate aptamers that selectively bind to a specific PFAS compound. These candidate aptamers can then be isolated from each other, sequenced, and then optimized to determine which sequence most preferentially binds to its target. By identifying several aptamer sequences that behave differently depending on the PFAS present in the environment, an aptamer-array for PFAS detection could be developed, thus mitigating selectivity issues in current analytical methods.