Donate
Donate

Gaming the Future: The Book!

Category: Nanodot

Biotech company claims to have automated cloning with chip

from the brave-new-world? dept.
According to a press release (30 January 2002) issued by the UK-based New Scientist Magazine, a specialized chip that will automatically create hundreds of cloned embryos at a time is being developed by Aegen Biosciences, a Californian biotech company. If true, the chip should help make cloning cheap and easy enough for companies to mass-produce identical copies of the best milk or meat producing animals for farmers. It might even be used for cloning human embryos. According to the release, the chip automates the laborious process of nuclear transfer, the key step in cloning. At present it takes hours of painstaking work with a microscope to remove the nucleus of an egg cell and replace it by fusing the denucleated egg with another cell.

Purdue researchers reveal structure of viral DNA-injector

from the biological-nanomachines dept.
According to a lengthy press release (30 January 2002), scientists at Purdue University have solved the three-dimensional structure of the bacteriophage T4 virus, which includes a complex syringe-like structure designed to inject viral DNA into a host cell. The researchers reported their work on this natural nano-mechanical device in the 31 January 2002 issue of Nature.

The study also reveals how the virus binds to the surface of the host, punctures the cell wall with a syringe-like tube and injects its own genetic blueprint into the cell. The virus uses its long-tail fibers to recognize its host and to send a signal back to the baseplate. Once the signal is received, the short-tail fibers help anchor the baseplate into the cell surface receptors. As the virus sinks down onto the surface, the baseplate undergoes a change — shifting from a hexagon to a star-shaped structure. At this time, the whole tail structure shrinks and widens, bringing the internal pin-like tube in contact with the outer membrane of the E. coli cell. As the tail tube punctures the outer and inner membranes of the E. coli cell, the virus' DNA is injected through the tail tube into the host cell. This genetic information then sets the cell's machinery to work creating replicas of the virus.

Analysis of the cell-puncturing device also reveals a structure that may hold potential for applications in nanotechnology, such as microscopic probes, said Michael Rossmann, Hanley Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences at Purdue who directed the study. "This a very stable structure that looks like a small stylus. It might be useful as a probe in an atomic force microscope, which employs a probe of molecular dimension."

Update: Additional information on this research, including links to high-resolution images of the T4 virus and the viral baseplate mechanism and a news video, is available on the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) website.

RPI in the final running for U.S. Army NT Center

According to an article in the Albaby, N.Y. Times Union ("RPI among finalists for Army nanotech project", by K. Aaron, 30 January 2002), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is one of just a few U.S. universities still under consideration to be the host institution of the University Affiliated Research Center (UARC) for the U.S. Armyís Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies (ISN). Competition for the UARC was quite keen, and included three universities in New York State alone (see Nanodot posts from 1 November and 28 November 2001). According to the article, the Army will announce which school will host the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies by the end of March. The award would bring the winning university $95 million over five years, though Richard W. Siegel, a professor who is leading the RPI effort, expects that to climb.

Synthetic antioxidant enzyme prevents type 1 diabetes in mice

According to a press release (25 January 2002), a new study by researchers at National Jewish Medical and Research Center and the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center shows that a synthetic antioxidant can delay and prevent the onset of autoimmune diabetes in mice. The antioxidant protected insulin-producing beta cells from lethal oxygen radicals generated in diabetes. The antioxidant also blocked the ability of the immune system to recognize beta cells, the target of the autoimmune attack in diabetes. The findings suggest that antioxidants may be useful against diabetes as well as other autoimmune diseases and organ-transplant rejections. The researchers used a synthetic catalytic antioxidant developed several years earlier by one of the researchers, and now licensed by Incara Pharmaceuticals Corporation. The antioxidant, dubbed AEOL 10113, mimics the naturally occurring antioxidant superoxide dismutase, but is effective against a wider range of antioxidants and lasts longer in the body. The findings, published by in the February issue of Diabetes, suggest that antioxidants may be useful against diabetes as well as other autoimmune disorders. Additional article can be found in this article (25 January 2002). from United Press International.

This research is following a line similar to that being explored by MetaPhore Pharmaceuticals, which is also testing a family of synthetic analogs of superoxide dismutase (see Nanodot posts from 12 July and 14 December 2001).

Heath team at UCLA reports advance in nanotube molectronics

Not content with the collaborative work with HP Labs that recently earned a molecular electronics patent (see Nanodot post from 24 January 2002), UCLA chemistry professor and California NanoSystems Institute researcher James Heath and his coworkers have announced an advance in using crossed arrays of carbon nanotubes to form molecular electronic circuits. The research was published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition, v41, pp 353 – 356 (18 January 2002). A summary of the report appeared on the Nature Science Update website ("Cylinders make circuits spontaneously: Carbon nanotubes assemble themselves into electronic grids", by Philip Ball, 29 January 2002).

Viral shells as nanochemical building blocks

According to a press release (25 January 2002), researchers at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and The Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology have found a way to attach a wide range of molecules to the surface of a virus, enhancing the virus with the properties of those molecules. The researchers say their technique may find applications in materials science, medicine, and molecular electronics, including the possibility of building circuits of conducting molecules on the surfaces of the viruses and form a component of a molecular-scale computer, or a new type of "nanowire." The work is reported in the 1 February 2002 issue of Angewandte Chemie.

The researchers found a method of putting a chemically reactive cysteine residue (a type of amino acid) on the surface of each of the 60 identical protein modules that make up the viral shell. The shell has an icosahedral shape, which provides 60 equivalent sites for attaching molecules. The researchers report they have been able to attach fluorescent dyes and clusters of gold molecules to the cysteine residues, which could be easily imaged. They also have successfully attached biotin (Vitamin B), sugars, and organic chemicals. The technique can be used to immobilize large molecules on the viral surface — whole proteins even. In addition, the virus particles can self-organize into network arrays in a crystal, which may make it a useful building block for various applications in nanotechnology. "You can, in principle, determine the type of assembly you get by programming the building blocks," says one researcher.

Update: Additional coverage is available in this article from United Press International

Crain's gets excited over NT in NY

from the old-news-warmed-over dept.
An article from Crain's New York Business ("New Yorkís in a nano state of mind with research and VC money", 28 January 2002) provides a rather boosterish perspective on nanotech research and business activity in New York State, but largely rehashes developments that have been taking place there over the past year or so.

Nanotech VC profiled in Red Herring

Venture capitalist Josh Wolfe is profiled in Red Herring Magazine ("In Nanotechnology, Josh Wolfe Is at the Door", by Stephan Herrera, January 28, 2002). Wolfe is cofounder and managing partner of New York-based Lux Capital and its nanotech-investment arm, Angstrom Partners. Last year, Mr. Wolfe published his conclusions on the field in a 272-page report, issued by Lux in August 2001, which attempted to size up the global nanotech phenomenon. He also helped found the NanoBusiness Alliance, which has designs on becoming the industry trade group for nanotechnology.

Samsung demonstrates very cold nanotube crud can form transistors

An article on the Technology Research News website ("Nanotube array could form chips", by Ted Smalley Bowen) describes work by a group of researcers from the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology and the Chonbuk National University in Korea who have made nanotube field-effect transistors in bulk by a relatively crude process that involves growing them in vertical bunches, then using electron beam lithography and ion etching to make the source, gate and drain electrodes that control the flow of electrons. Their carbon nanotube transistors worked at temperatures up to an extremely cold -243 degrees Celsius. The report dryly notes that the transistors will need to work at much warmer temperatures to be used in practical devices, and includes comments from other nanotube researchers to the effect that the researchers' method is still very rough, and they did not demonstrate that individual transistors could be accessed. The nanotubes rough composition limits their use, said Yue Wu, associate professor of physics at the University of North Carolina. "The carbon nanotubes are very defective. The device won't work at room temperature because the tubes are not clean semiconductors," he said. The work was reported in the 26 November 2001 issue of Applied Physics Letters.

RPI researchers report work on nanotubes

A pair of brief press releases tell of recent work with carbon nanotubes by researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI):

Facebook Twitter Youtube Linkedin Podcast Spotify
0
    0
    Your Cart
    Your cart is emptyReturn to Shop
    Continue Shopping

      Search Foresight Institute