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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: Technology Review: Blogs: arXiv blog: Self-Propelling Bacteria Harnessed to Turn Gears. YouTube – IBM DNA Transistor. Now if they could only come up with a way to write it… 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. [...] 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? Two recent publications provide more evidence of the growing capability of DNA scaffolds to support complex and interactive functions. 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. A nanotech-based gene-therapy method that dramatically improved the efficiency of conventional cancer therapy in animal models is now undergoing clinical trials. 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. MIT scientists have demonstrated the usefulness of biological frameworks for combining distinct functional elements to make a device. 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. 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 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 [...] 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 [...] 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. 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. The relevance of the ribosome to nanotech may be greatly increased by the announcement that synthetic ribosomes have been created and used to synthesize a complex protein named firefly luciferase. Another promising nanotech approach to harnessing the potential of siRNA molecules is to pack them on the surface of gold nanoparticles. Plant viruses are a new addition to the long list of types of nanoparticles being investigated as next generation nanotech cancer therapies. Two independently controlled nanomechanical devices can be positioned on a two-dimensional DNA grid so that they can cooperate to capture between them one of four DNA building blocks, determined by which of two possible states each device is set to. |
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