Grant enjoys explaining her research to the uninitiated. The enthusiasm in her voice conveys a sense of wonder, too, that such things are possible at all.

"When you think about the development of sensors, no one person can do it all. The first part is how can we detect this analyte that we're looking at? And that's what my lab does, but then we ask, how are we going to miniaturize and package it? How are we going to improve signal quality to have a working device? We have been putting together the right personnel to work on sensor development with people across campus from the vet school, med school, physics, chemistry, engineering, and biology. All these people have different expertise in different fields, but it can relate to sensor development. The University has a strong spirit of collaboration. It's what makes it an exciting place for research."

One of the first of these MU colleagues was Carol Lorenzen, an assistant professor in MU's Food Science Department. Lorenzen first heard Grant talk about biosensors at a seminar Grant gave when interviewing for her position. After Grant was offered the job, Lorenzen approached her and asked Grant if she would collaborate in the development of a sensor to scientifically measure the tenderness of beef. "I was surprised at first to hear there's a particular enzyme you can monitor to determine tenderness in meat," says Grant. "But there was no reason we couldn't develop a sensor to detect it."

That enzyme is calpain, a naturally occurring enzyme that breaks down muscle fiber in meat, affecting its tenderness. Calpastatin is another chemical that regulates that process. Grant and Lorenzen's goal was to develop a biological sensor for calpastatin because measuring it in a piece of beef indicates how tough or tender it is. They have been having some success, and a market prototype ready for testing is about two years away.

"Ours is a real synergy of different backgrounds," says Lorenzen. "She knew very little about meat science, and I didn't know much about biosensors, but we obtained three year's worth of funding and were able to do something that will influence the meat sciences and affect food quality. It also opened up new places for both of us to pursue funding."

Grant says a more recent project has the potential to help people at risk for heart attacks.

During an attack, she explains, victims suffer what doctors describe as myocardial infarction, the rapid death of cardiac muscle tissue. This process usually begins well before victims have any sense of impending danger.

Researchers have long known that even in the early stages of infarction, cardiac tissue releases a chemical called Troponin-T. Their hope is that a vascular biosensor detecting elevated troponin levels could alert patients of the onset of myocardial infarction well before the heart attack has a chance to kill them. Such a sensor might even be able to automatically trigger life-saving treatment.