The castor bean plant R. communis is a widely spread noxious weed that gained popularity in Australia as a garden ornamental. The seed is the source of castor oil and the highly toxic protein ricin, which is listed as a biological weapon. DST Group has spent numerous years researching R. communis to establish strategies for the determination of attribution of unknown extracts. Ostensibly this effort has focused on “omics” techniques. The major thrust of this “omics” based approach has been metabolomics. In essence metabolomics is the assessment of a biological system’s status at a particular point in time and in response to its environment. This measurement should be unbiased and repeatable. Extracts of the biological system are measured using standard analytical chemistry techniques like Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS) and 1H Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Spectroscopy. Collected data is then further interrogated using multivariate statistical analysis. The aim is to identify chemical compounds that are identifiers of the biological system’s current state. This presentation will summarise DST Group’s efforts to date in establishing methodologies for attribution determinations. The presented data will discuss extracts of seeds collected from Australia in addition to seeds sourced from overseas seed suppliers. Additionally the current direction of our research program will also be discussed, and recent results highlighted and discussed.

Studying the metabolome of Ricinus communis for attribution

2019 Fall National Meeting

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