At every meeting of the Technology Roadmap for Productive Nanosystems, we find at least one new rising star in nanotechnology. At the recent meeting held at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, it was Prof. Matthew Francis of UC Berkeley. Access to these folks is one of the main attractions for organizations participating in the Roadmap process.… Continue reading Rising nanotechnology star: Berkeley's Matthew Francis
Medical News Today tells of an advance by teams at Rutgers, UCLA, and Institut Jacques Monod in Paris on figuring out how an important molecular machine in nature does its job. Some excerpts: Two papers by Ebright and collaborators in the Nov. 17 issue of the journal Science define for the first time the mechanisms… Continue reading Nanotechnology shows dynamics of nature's molecular machines
We at Foresight are big fans of researchers with ambitious nanotech goals, and today we introduce to you Prof. Shuguang Zhang, associate director of the Center for Biomedical Engineering at MIT. In eJournal USA he wrote of his vision for the future of nanotechnology via molecular machines: By imitating nature, scientists are designing completely new… Continue reading Visionary nanotechnology molecular machines pursued at MIT
Researchers at UCSF and UC Berkeley have found a way to combine a drug with a dendrimer to give a treatment that cures colon cancer in mice — in one treatment. From Phys.org: Single-Dose Drug-Loaded Dendrimer Cures Mice of Colon Cancer In a dramatic demonstration of the power of nanotechnology, a team of investigators has… Continue reading One-shot nanotechnology treatment *cures* colon cancer in mice
For decades we’ve heard of the horrific difficulty of the protein folding problem: how to go from knowledge of a linear sequence of amino acids to the three-dimensional structure of a folded, useful protein? This is needed if we are to use proteins to build 3D structures that we want for nanotechnology. From Physorg.com we… Continue reading Atomically-precise protein folding software aids nanotechnology
From Nature.com, news of nanotechnology advances at Hebrew University: Tiny machines that patrol the body for invaders are one of nanotechnology’s favourite dreams. But a device made from a single molecule by a team of researchers in Israel sounds remarkably similar. They have built a ‘DNA machine’ that detects a virus by reading its genome,… Continue reading Israel's nanotechnology DNA machine detects viruses
The competition must be fierce to be selected by the U.S. National Institutes of Health as one of four National Network of Nanomedicine Development Centers. Based on both this year’s and last year’s medical nanotech funding results, it helps to focus on molecular machines: 2006 Georgia Tech: Nanomedicine Center for Nucleoprotein Machines Purdue: Nanomotor Drug… Continue reading Nanomachines targeted for medical nanotechnology
First, the good news. Here’s an update from Physorg.com on the nanoactuator work reported previously. Not much new technical info, but new thoughts on cool applications: Researchers at the University of Portsmouth, UK, have developed an electronic switch based on DNA – a world-first bio-nanotechnology breakthrough that provides the foundation for the interface between living… Continue reading Patents on fundamental nanotechnology devices may slow progress
Eoin Clancy writes from the Institute for Nanoscale Science & Technology at University of Newcastle: Recent paper published in Nano Letters “Medium Scale Integration of Molecular Logic Gates in an Automaton” by Joanne Macdonald et al. From the abstract: We now report a second-generation deoxyribozyme-based automaton, MAYA-II, which plays a complete game of tic-tac-toe according… Continue reading DNA does tic-tac-toe, molecular motors work together in nanotechnology
From the Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Awards for 2006, MIT’s Angela Belcher and colleagues are using viruses to build at the molecular level: VIRAL MANUFACTURING Innovators: Angela Belcher, Yet-Ming Chiang, Paula Hammond MIT scientists reached a major nanotech milestone: re-engineering a virus to create a self-assembling product. THE GOAL OF nanofabrication is to make tiny machines… Continue reading Viruses begin to do nanotechnology construction at MIT
