This contribution has been forwarded by Ivo Rivetta. Researchers at UC Berkeley have taken a bioinspired approach to control the nanostructure of deposited thin films. In living organisms, the orientation of collagen in tissue determines its properties: For instance, a number of blue-skinned animals, including the mandrill monkey, derive their coloring not from pigment, but… Continue reading Viruses guide nano-assembly of biomaterials
Tiles made from DNA helices have been made to self-assemble into a more complex structure, which then was used to seed the formation of a complementary structure. This second structure in turn seeded the formation of multiple copies of the first structure.
A complex piece of DNA that acts as a biological computer when it is inserted into cells determines whether or not the cell is a specific type of cancer cell, and if so, initiates the suicide of that cell.
Nanotechnology has been applied to produce various types of nanoparticles that can deliver toxic agents specifically to the cancer cells. Many of these approaches have shown promise in animal studies. One approach using magnetic nanoparticles has now gone into trials in patients. From “Nano-therapy that cooks deadly brain tumors advances in Germany,” by Ryan McBride:… Continue reading Magnetic nanoparticles to cook brain cancer go into trial in patient
An algorithm helps design peptides that will self-assemble on a given surface to produce a supramolecular structure of desired geometry.
Growing heart cells in a scaffold containing gold nanowires produces a tissue patch that is thicker and in which the cells beat synchronously as they do in healthy heart tissue.
Engineered bacteria that incorporate unnatural amino acids at multiple positions provide a new tool that may facilitate designing proteins to fold more predictably into molecular machinery components.
Have you seen those beautiful animations illustrating how the complex molecular machinery in a cell works? (Ex. http://youtu.be/sa563MdIiXE) Just how much of that is ‘made up’? How much is real? How is the information gathered, and what potentials can we unlock with it? Foresight is proud to announce its next dinner lecture: “Elucidating Bio-Nanomachines: Microscopies… Continue reading Bio-Nanomachinery Dinner Lecture, Mountain View, CA, August 30
Those interested in issues of communication at the nanoscale will be interested to learn that the first volume of the new journal Nano Communication Networks, from Elsevier, edited by Ian Akyildiz, is available free of charge. The volume comprises four issues dated March through December of 2010. Just to pick one article out of dozens… Continue reading Molecular information theory points to robust molecular communications
A neural network made from 112 DNA strands organized into four artificial neurons was trained with four pieces of information to answer questions.
