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Mars Base

Researchers develop nanodevice manufacturing strategy using DNA 'building blocks' - 0 views

phys.org/...evice-strategy-dna-blocks.html

scibyte49 dna NanoDevice

shared by Mars Base on 31 May 12 - No Cached
  • Researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have developed a method for building complex nanostructures out of short synthetic strands of DNA
  • interlocking DNA "building blocks," akin to Legos, can be programmed to assemble themselves into precisely designed shapes, such as letters and emoticons
  • Further development of the technology could enable the creation of new nanoscale devices, such as those that deliver drugs directly to disease sites.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • DNA is best known as a keeper of genetic information
  • in an emerging field of science known as DNA nanotechnology, it is being explored for use as a material with which to build tiny, programmable structures for diverse applications
  • most research has focused on the use of a single long biological strand of DNA, which acts as a backbone along which smaller strands bind to its many different segments, to create shapes
  • called DNA origami
  • In focusing on the use of short strands of synthetic DNA and avoiding the long scaffold strand, Yin's team developed an alternative building method
  • Each SST is a single, short strand of DNA
  • One tile will interlock with another tile, if it has a complementary sequence of DNA
  • are no complementary matches, the blocks do not connect
  • collection of tiles can assemble itself into specific, predetermined shapes through a series of interlocking local connections
  • researchers created just over one hundred different designs, including Chinese characters, numbers, and fonts, using hundreds of tiles for a single structure of 100 nanometers (billionths of a meter) in size.
  • SSTs could have some important applications in medicine
  • SSTs could organize themselves into drug-delivery machines that maintain their structural integrity until they reach specific cell targets, and because they are synthetic, can be made highly biocompatible.
Mars Base

Nanotechnology breakthrough could dramatically improve medical tests - 0 views

phys.org/...logy-breakthrough-medical.html

scibyte49 NanoDevice MedicalTreatment

shared by Mars Base on 01 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • The material consists of a series of glass pillars in a layer of gold. Each pillar is speckled on its sides with gold dots and capped with a gold disk. Each pillar is just 60 nanometers in diameter, 1/1,000th the width of a human hair
  • laboratory test used to detect disease and perform biological research could be made more than 3 million times more sensitive
  • increased performance could greatly improve the early detection of cancer, Alzheimer's disease and other disorders by allowing doctors to detect far lower concentrations of telltale markers than was previously practical.
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • The greater the glow, the more of the biomarker is present.
  • if the amount of biomarker is too small, the fluorescent light is too faint to be detected, setting the limit of detection
  • major goal in immunoassay research is to improve the detection limit.
  • involves a common biological test called an immunoassay, which mimics the action of the immune system to detect the presence of biomarkers
  • When biomarkers are present
  • the immunoassay test produces a fluorescent glow (light) that can be measured in a laboratory
  • tackled this limitation by using nanotechnology to greatly amplify the faint fluorescence from a sample
  • fashioning glass and gold structures so small they could only be seen with a powerful electron microscope
  • able to drastically increase the fluorescence signal compared to conventional immunoassays, leading to a 3-million-fold improvement in the limit of detection
  • key to the breakthrough lies in a new artificial nanomaterial called D2PA
  • a thin layer of gold nanostructures surrounded glass pillars just 60 nanometers in diameter.
  • A nanometer is one billionth of a meter; that means about 1,000 of the pillars laid side by side would be as wide as a human hair.
  • e pillars are spaced 200 nanometers apart and capped with a disk of gold on each pillar
  • sides of each pillar are speckled with even tinier gold dots about 10 to 15 nanometers in diameter
  • a sample such as blood, saliva or urine is taken from a patient and added to small glass vials containing antibodies that are designed to "capture" or bind to biomarkers of interest in the sample
  • Another set of antibodies that have been labeled with a fluorescent molecule are then added to the mix
  • biomarkers are not present in the vials
  • fluorescent detection antibodies do not attach to anything and are washed away
  • immunoassays are commonly used in drug discovery and other biological research.
  • plays a significant role in other areas of chemistry and engineering, from light-emitting displays to solar energy harvesting
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