Nanomachines targeted for medical nanotechnology
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 Delivery Center
UCLA: Center for Systemic Control of Cyto-Networks
UC/LBNL: Center for Optical Control of Biological Function
2005
Baylor: Center for Protein Folding Machinery
UIUC: National Center for Design of Biomimetic Nanoconductors
UCSF: Center for Engineering Cellular Control Systems
Columbia: NanoMedicine Center for Mechanical Biology
It’s clear: molecular machine systems are central to the future of medicine. Congratulations to the 2006 winners: Gang Bao, Peixuan Guo, Chih-Ming Ho, and Ehud Isacoff.—Christine
October 27th, 2006 at 4:45 PM
Eureka! They’re using GOATS!
(From http://crisp.cit.nih.gov/crisp/CRISP_LIB.getdoc?textkey=6931268&p_grant_num=1PN1EY016586-01&p_query=&ticket=11438445&p_audit_session_id=52354243&p_keywords= )
“Our goats are to apply complementary sets of nanotools towards learning how biological systems respond to physical cues, and to develop new technologies from the insights derived.”
If you don’t know how to do something, maybe a goat does…I guess this is just a different version of “If you want something done, forbid your child from doing it.” Or have they just got our goat?
But seriously, having looked at a few of the links, some of the nanomachines of interest are plain old holoenzymes and enzyme complexes.