Subject: Internship position available at JIFSAN

Description:
The Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (JIFSAN) is seeking
an intern to begin in the summer and continue through the upcoming academic
year. Internships are paid after the first 100 hours as a volunteer.
Applications can be downloaded from http://research.jifsan.umd.edu/payroll/
and should be returned to the CMNS Undergraduate Research and Internships
Office, 1313 Symons Hall or emailed to [log in to unmask] Please note the
specific qualifications under Project Needs. Applicants not meeting the
minimum qualifications will not be considered.

Project Title: Rapid Detection and Quantitation of Hydrolyzed Gluten
Principal Investigators: Garber, Eric	

Project Description: An estimated 1-in-131 Americans suffer from Celiac
Disease with avoidance of gluten being the only approach to prevent a
reaction. On August 5, 2013, the FDA issued a regulation regarding the use of
the term gluten-free. In this regulation, it was acknowledged that currently
there were no reliable methods to determine the gluten content in fermented
and hydrolyzed products. The goal of this project is to continue the research
initiated in 2013 to adapt validated dipsticks designed to detect intact
gluten using a sandwich format to a competitive format that will detect
hydrolyzed gluten.

Project Objective: The applicant will
• convert two commercially available gluten detection dipsticks to a
competitive format,
• determine the sensitivity of “competitive” dipsticks for the
detection of hydrolyzed gluten,
• Using the hydrolyzed standard developed by the Prolamine Working Group,
determine the performance parameters of the dipsticks,
• Fractionate gluten hydrolysate using modifications of flash
chromatography and size exclusion filtration,
• ascertain the performance of the size fractionated gluten (peptides) with
the dipsticks, and
• compare the dipstick results to data gathered using ELISAs for gluten
detection.

Project Needs and Duration: The student should have completed one semester of
biochemistry, one year of organic chemistry, one semester of organic
chemistry laboratory, and obtained at least a grade of B in second semester
general chemistry. Preference will be given to applicants that have completed
one semester of either biochemistry or cell biology. The estimated duration
of the internship project is one year. Time requirements include 8-10 h/week
during the school year and 30 h/week during break sessions.

Location: CFSAN Wiley Building, 5100 Paintbranch Parkway, College Park, MD

Contact Person: Kaci Thompson
Contact Email: [log in to unmask]
Website URL: http://research.jifsan.umd.edu/internship-program/