Scientists use nanosensors for first time to measure cancer biomarkers in blood

Scientists use nanosensors for first time to measure cancer biomarkers in blood.  From Eurekalert:
New Haven, Conn.—A team led by Yale University researchers has used nanosensors to measure cancer biomarkers in whole blood for the first time. Their findings, which appear December 13 in the advanced online publication of Nature Nanotechnology, could dramatically simplify the way [...]

Researchers show how proteins slide along DNA to carry out vital biological processes

Researchers show how proteins slide along DNA to carry out vital biological processes.
For decades, scientists have known that proteins searching for genetic sequences are able to locate them at rates much faster than expected. They found that rather than moving around the entire three-dimensional space inside a cell, they moved in one-dimension, along DNA molecules. [...]

A molecular machine in action

From the protein crystallography beamline at Berkeley Labs Advanced Light Source: an action shapshot the Rho transcription factor from E. coli.
The orange spiral in the middle is a strand of RNA, and Rho is everything else.
 

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPQ0OnlfkkA)
(h/t Technology Review blog)

Peptides control crystal growth with switches, throttles and brakes

Peptides control crystal growth with switches, throttles and brakes. From Physorg.com.
 

 
(PhysOrg.com) — By producing some of the highest resolution images of peptides attaching to mineral surfaces, scientists have a deeper understanding how biomolecules manipulate the growth crystals.
The research, which appears in the Nov. 23 online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of [...]

Atomic precision as the goal of nanotechnology

Nanotechnology Enables Real Atomic Precision is the title of a piece by Susan Smith in Desktop Engineering, which includes comments by longtime Foresight Senior Associates Steve Vetter and Tihamer Toth-Fejel:
While nanotechology might mean different things to different people, the term was originally coined to describe the building of things from the bottom up with atomic [...]

Technology Review: Blogs: arXiv blog: Self-Propelling Bacteria Harnessed to Turn Gears

Technology Review: Blogs: arXiv blog: Self-Propelling Bacteria Harnessed to Turn Gears.
No, it’s not harnessing the flagellar rotory motor to turn nanogears, it’s harnessing the entire beast, statistically, to turn microgears. Still interesting.

IBM DNA “Transistor”

YouTube – IBM DNA Transistor.
It isn’t really a transistor, it’s a gadget for sequencing DNA through a nanopore. But it’s getting close to the way one expects nanotech to read a molecule, as it it were a magnetic tape or the like.

Now if they could only come up with a way to write it…

Nanotechnology for chemical and biological defense: the book

Here at Foresight our main focus is on longer-term technologies such as molecular manufacturing, but we keep an eye on what’s arriving along the nearer-term pathways as well.  In 2007 I attended a workshop on “Nanotechnology for Chemical and Biological Defense” and the proceedings volume of that meeting, with the same name, is now available. [...]

Proteins

If you were an alien from an advanced civilization who had been stranded on Earth, but had all your people’s knowledge on a thumb drive, how would you go about creating nanotech and building up Earth’s technology to the level you could rejoin your galactic civilization?
If you actually knew the details, probably one of the [...]

Advancing nanotechnology by organizing functional components on addressable DNA scaffolds

Two recent publications provide more evidence of the growing capability of DNA scaffolds to support complex and interactive functions.

Modular DNA nanotubes provide programmable scaffolds for nanotechnology

A new modular method of constructing DNA nanotubes provides control of the geometry of the nanotube cross-section and may enable real-time modulation of the stiffness and porosity of the nanotube.

Nanotechnology in clinical trials to restore normal gene function to cancer cells

A nanotech-based gene-therapy method that dramatically improved the efficiency of conventional cancer therapy in animal models is now undergoing clinical trials.

Nanotechnology pulls DNA through nanopore slowly enough to read sequence

Using a magnetic bead to slowly pull a DNA molecule through a solid-sate nanopore looks promising as the basis for a very fast and efficient nanotech DNA sequencing method.

Nanotechnology builds battery on a virus framework

MIT scientists have demonstrated the usefulness of biological frameworks for combining distinct functional elements to make a device.

DNA nanorobot walks without intervention along rigid track

Scientists have succeeded in coordinating the movements of the biped’s legs so that it can walk in one direction along a DNA track without the need of intervention at each step.

Protein design revolution points toward advanced nanotechnology

Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania used basic engineering principles derived from studying natural proteins to design from scratch a simple and small protein that performed the function of carrying oxygen that is performed by natural globin proteins.

A DNA nanotechnology road to molecular assembly lines?

A piece in The Christian Science Monitor compares Nadrian Seeman, founder of the field of structural DNA nanotechnology and winner of the 1995 Foresight Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology, with Henry Ford—implying that his recent accomplishment with his collaborators in creating a two-armed DNA nanorobot could point to a role for DNA nanorobots in future nanotech [...]

Promise of nanotechnology for fighting infectious diseases will balance public’s safety concerns

A Newsdesk feature by Kelly Morris titled “Nanotechnology crucial in fighting infectious disease” in the April 2009 issue of Lancet Infectious Diseases surveys some highlights in developing nanotech efforts to prevent, diagnose, and treat infectious diseases. Examples include detecting disease through lab-on-a-chip technology featuring cantilevers that move upon binding antigens and nanowires that detect current [...]

Nanotechnology targets cancer cells with dumbbell-like particles

By joining an iron oxide nanoparticle bearing a tumor-specific antibody with a gold nanoparticle bearing an anti-cancer drug, scientists created a dumbbell-like nanotech vehicle that delivered the drug into breast cancer cells.

Nanotechnology proposed to improve bone implants

Nanotech advances are leading toward bone implants that are are smart, multifunctional devices that will be capable of improved integration with surrounding bone tissue, and that will resist inflammation, bacterial growth, and the recurrence of bone cancer.