Tag Archives: nanobio

Northwestern University’s (US) International Institute for Nanotechnology (IIN) rakes in some cash

Leave a reply

Within less than a month Northwestern University’s International Institute for Nanotechnology (IIN) has been granted awarded two grants by the US Department of Defense.

4D printing

The first grant, for 4D printing, was announced in a June 11, 2015 Northwestern news release by Megan Fellman (Note: A link has been removed),

Northwestern University’s International Institute for Nanotechnology (IIN) has received a five-year, $8.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense’s competitive Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) program to develop a “4-dimensional printer” — the next generation of printing technology for the scientific world.

Once developed, the 4-D printer, operating on the nanoscale, will be used to construct new devices for research in chemistry, materials sciences and U.S. defense-related areas that could lead to new chemical and biological sensors, catalysts, microchip designs and materials designed to respond to specific materials or signals.

“This research promises to bring transformative advancement to the development of biosensors, adaptive optics, artificially engineered tissues and more by utilizing nanotechnology,” said IIN director and chemist Chad A. Mirkin, who is leading the multi-institution project. Mirkin is the George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.

The award, issued by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, supports a team of experts from Northwestern, the University of Miami, the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Maryland.

In science, “printing” encodes information at specific locations on a material’s surface, similar to how we print words on paper with ink. The 4-dimensional printer will consist of millions of tiny elastomeric “pens” that can be used individually and independently to create nanometer-size features composed of hard or soft materials.

The information encoded can be in the form of materials with a defined set of chemical and physical properties. The printing speed and resolution determine the amount and complexity of the information that can be encoded.

Progress in fields ranging from biology to chemical sensing to computing currently are limited by the lack of low-cost equipment that can perform high-resolution printing and 3-dimensional patterning on hard materials (e.g., metals and semiconductors) and soft materials (e.g., organic and biological materials) at nanometer resolution (approximately 1,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair).

“Ultimately, the 4-D printer will provide a foundation for a new generation of tools to develop novel architectures, wherein the hard materials that form the functional components of electronics can be merged with biological or soft materials,” said Milan Mrksich, a co-principal investigator on the grant.

Mrksich is the Henry Wade Rogers Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Chemistry and Cell and Molecular Biology, with appointments in the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, Weinberg and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

A July 10, 2015 article about the ‘4D printer’ grant  by Madeline Fox for the Daily Northwestern features a description of 4D printing from Milan Mrksich, a co-principal investigator on the grant,

Milan Mrksich, one of the project’s five senior participants, said that while most people are familiar with the three dimensions of length, width and depth, there are often misconceptions about the fourth property of a four-dimensional object. Mrksich used Legos as an analogy to describe 4D printing technology.

“If you take Lego blocks, you can basically build any structure you want by controlling which Lego is connected to which Lego and controlling all their dimensions in space,” Mrksich said. “Within an object made up of nanoparticles, we’re controlling the placement — as we use a printer to control the placement of every particle, our fourth dimension lets us choose which nanoparticle with which property would be at each position.”

Thank you Dr. Mrksich and Ms. Fox for that helpful analogy.

Designing advanced bioprogrammable nanomaterials

The second grant, announced in a July 6, 2015 Northwestern news release by Megan Fellman, is apparently the only one of its kind in the US (Note: A link has been removed),

Northwestern University’s International Institute for Nanotechnology (IIN) has been awarded a U.S. Air Force Center of Excellence grant to design advanced bioprogrammable nanomaterials for solutions to challenging problems in the areas of energy, the environment, security and defense, as well as for developing ways to monitor and mitigate human stress.

The five-year, $9.8 million grant establishes the Center of Excellence for Advanced Bioprogrammable Nanomaterials (C-ABN), the only one of its kind in the country. After the initial five years, the grant potentially could be renewed for an additional five years.

“Northwestern University was chosen to lead this Center of Excellence because of its investment in infrastructure development, including new facilities and instrumentation; its recruitment of high-caliber faculty members and students; and its track record in bio-nanotechnology and cognitive sciences,” said Timothy Bunning, chief scientist at the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Materials and Manufacturing Directorate.

Led by IIN director Chad A. Mirkin, C-ABN will support collaborative, discovery-based research projects aimed at developing bioprogrammable nanomaterials that will meet both military and civilian needs and facilitate the efficient transition of these new technologies from the laboratory to marketplace.

Bioprogrammable nanomaterials are structures that typically contain a biomolecular component, such as nucleic acids or proteins, which give the materials a variety of novel capabilities. [emphasis mine] Nanomaterials can be designed to assemble into large 3-D structures, to interface with biological structures inside cells or tissues, or to interface with existing macroscale devices, for example. These new bioprogrammable nanomaterials and the fundamental knowledge gained through their development will ultimately lead to the creation of wearable, portable and/or human-interactive devices with extraordinary capabilities that will significantly impact both civilian and Air Force needs.

In one research area, scientists will work to understand the molecular underpinnings of vulnerability and resilience to stress. They will use bioprogrammable nanomaterials to develop ultrasensitive sensors capable of detecting and quantifying biomarkers for human stress in biological fluids (e.g., saliva, perspiration or blood), providing means to easily monitor the soldier during times of extreme stress. Ultimately, these bioprogrammable materials may lead to methods to increase human cellular resilience to the effects of stress and/or to correct genetic mutations that decrease cellular resilience of susceptible individuals.

Other research projects, encompassing a wide variety of nanotechnology-enabled goals, include:

Developing hybrid wearable energy-storage devices;
Developing devices to identify chemical and biological targets in a field environment;
Developing flexible bio-electronic circuits;
Designing a new class of flat optics; and
Advancing understanding of design rules between 2-D and 3-D architectures.

The analysis of these nanostructures also will extend fundamental knowledge in the fields of materials science and engineering, human performance, chemistry, biology and physics.

The center will be housed under the IIN, providing researchers with access to IIN’s strong entrepreneurial community and its close ties with Northwestern’s renowned Kellogg School of Management.

This second news release provides an interesting contrast to a recent news release from Sweden’s Karolinska Intitute where the writer was careful to note that the enzymes and organic electronic ion pumps were not living as noted in my June 26, 2015 posting. It seems nucleic acids (as in RNA and DNA) can be mentioned without a proviso in the US. as there seems to be little worry about anti-GMO (genetically modified organisms) and similar backlashes affecting biotechnology research.

Tel Aviv University and the quest for super-slim, bendable displays

Leave a reply

It’s beginning to seem like the quest for the Holy Grail. That is, the search for an object more myth than fact, but researchers at Tel Aviv University (TAU) believe they are on the right track to develop a slim, flexible screen according to a March 30, 2015 news item on Nanowerk (Note: A link has been removed),

From smartphones and tablets to computer monitors and interactive TV screens, electronic displays are everywhere. As the demand for instant, constant communication grows, so too does the urgency for more convenient portable devices — especially devices, like computer displays, that can be easily rolled up and put away, rather than requiring a flat surface for storage and transportation.

A new Tel Aviv University study, published recently in Nature Nanotechnology (“Light-emitting self-assembled peptide nucleic acids exhibit both stacking interactions and Watson–Crick base pairing”), suggests that a novel DNA-peptide structure can be used to produce thin, transparent, and flexible screens. The research, conducted by Prof. Ehud Gazit and doctoral student Or Berger of the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology at TAU’s Faculty of Life Sciences, in collaboration with Dr. Yuval Ebenstein and Prof. Fernando Patolsky of the School of Chemistry at TAU’s Faculty of Exact Sciences, harnesses bionanotechnology to emit a full range of colors in one pliable pixel layer — as opposed to the several rigid layers that constitute today’s screens.

A March 30, 2015 American Friends of Tel Aviv University news release, which originated the news item, describes the material’s advantages and how the researchers developed it,

“Our material is light, organic, and environmentally friendly,” said Prof. Gazit. “It is flexible, and a single layer emits the same range of light that requires several layers today. By using only one layer, you can minimize production costs dramatically, which will lead to lower prices for consumers as well.”

…

For the purpose of the study, a part of Berger’s Ph.D. thesis, the researchers tested different combinations of peptides: short protein fragments, embedded with DNA elements which facilitate the self-assembly of a unique molecular architecture.

Peptides and DNA are two of the most basic building blocks of life. Each cell of every life form is composed of such building blocks. In the field of bionanotechnology, scientists utilize these building blocks to develop novel technologies with properties not available for inorganic materials such as plastic and metal.

“Our lab has been working on peptide nanotechnology for over a decade, but DNA nanotechnology is a distinct and fascinating field as well. When I started my doctoral studies, I wanted to try and converge the two approaches,” said Berger. “In this study, we focused on PNA — peptide nucleic acid, a synthetic hybrid molecule of peptides and DNA. We designed and synthesized different PNA sequences, and tried to build nano-metric architectures with them.”

Using methods such as electron microscopy and X-ray crystallography, the researchers discovered that three of the molecules they synthesized could self-assemble, in a few minutes, into ordered structures. The structures resembled the natural double-helix form of DNA, but also exhibited peptide characteristics. This resulted in a very unique molecular arrangement that reflects the duality of the new material.

“Once we discovered the DNA-like organization, we tested the ability of the structures to bind to DNA-specific fluorescent dyes,” said Berger. “To our surprise, the control sample, with no added dye, emitted the same fluorescence as the variable. This proved that the organic structure is itself naturally fluorescent.”

…

The structures were found to emit light in every color, as opposed to other fluorescent materials that shine only in one specific color. Moreover, light emission was observed also in response to electric voltage — which make it a perfect candidate for opto-electronic devices like display screens.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Light-emitting self-assembled peptide nucleic acids exhibit both stacking interactions and Watson–Crick base pairing by Or Berger, Lihi Adler-Abramovich, Michal Levy-Sakin, Assaf Grunwald, Yael Liebes-Peer, Mor Bachar, Ludmila Buzhansky, Estelle Mossou, V. Trevor Forsyth, Tal Schwartz, Yuval Ebenstein, Felix Frolow, Linda J. W. Shimon, Fernando Patolsky, & Ehud Gazit. Nature Nanotechnology (2015) doi:10.1038/nnano.2015.27 Published online 16 March 2015

This paper is behind a paywall but a free preview is available via ReadCube Access.

Big bucks for soft materials research at Simon Fraser University (Canada)

Leave a reply

4D Labs at Simon Fraser University (SFU; Vancouver), one of Canada’s nanoscienceish labs, will be hosting a new centre, according to a Dec. 18, 2013 SFU news release,

A new Centre for Soft Materials for Simon Fraser University’s 4D LABS facility will be established with a federal government investment of more than $4.3 million. The Honourable Michelle Rempel, Minister of State for Western Economic Diversification, made the announcement today [Dec. 18, 2013] at SFU.

The Western Economic Diversification Canada support will enhance SFU’s research infrastructure by creating an applications-driven research institute for the design, development, demonstration and delivery of advanced functional materials and nanoscale devices aimed at soft materials.

Here’s what they expect to be receiving and what they will be doing with it (from the news release),

The suite of sophisticated equipment includes two electron microscopes. These will allow local companies and innovators from a variety of sectors to more accurately visualize and analyze their advanced soft materials, while preserving nano-scale features within these materials. [emphasis mine]

These capabilities are critical to understanding and improving the performance of soft materials in real-world conditions, while also enabling a detailed understanding of new materials and products that will greatly reduce their time to market.

The Centre will also provide students with hands-on training and use of advanced microscopy and complementary tooling that was previously unavailable in Canada. [emphasis mine]

It would seem the first order of importance is industry (local companies and innovators) with students falling into second place. Some years ago I commented on a possible conflict of interest when universities attempt to cater to industry/business needs and student needs. It’s a situation where business can afford to pay more or offer incentives that students (and professors) cannot hope to match in a potential competition for access to equipment and resources.

This project has attracted matching funds (from the news release),

The Automotive Fuel Cell Cooperation (AFCC) is contributing an additional $1.9 million to the project and funding is being further matched by $2.4 million from SFU.

…

AFCC Chief Financial Officer Tim Bovich says the partnership “sets an example of how cooperation among government, industry and academia can promote Canada, and British Columbia in particular, as the premier location for fuel cell stack producers and their many suppliers.” These technologies will also be accessible to many other sectors, including lighting, information technology, medicine, measurement and controls, electronics, clean energy, and security.

“Through this investment from the Government of Canada, and SFU’s ongoing partnership with the Automotive Fuel Cell Cooperation, 4D LABS is now able to expand its capabilities. We can enable a more accurate nano-scale visualization and chemical analysis of a diverse range of soft materials, that include biological tissues, composites and membranes, whose function depends on the distribution of water, polymers, and other matrices within the material,” says SFU Chemistry Associate Professor Byron Gates, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Surface Chemistry.

“Academic, industrial and government researchers across Western Canada will benefit from the addition of this Centre, which will facilitate further product innovation and economic development in the region.” {emphasis mine]

Congratulations to the folks at 4D Labs!

Chad Mirkin, spherical nucleic acids, and a new ‘periodic table’

2 Replies

There was a big splash in July 2012 with the announcement that Chad Mirkin’s team at Northwestern University (Chicago, Illinois) had devised a skin cream that penetrated the skin barrier to deliver medication (my July 4, 2012 posting),

A team led by a physician-scientist and a chemist — from the fields of dermatology and nanotechnology — is the first to demonstrate the use of commercial moisturizers to deliver gene regulation technology that has great potential for life-saving therapies for skin cancers.

The topical delivery of gene regulation technology to cells deep in the skin is extremely difficult because of the formidable defenses skin provides for the body. The Northwestern approach takes advantage of drugs consisting of novel spherical arrangements of nucleic acids. These structures, each about 1,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair, have the unique ability to recruit and bind to natural proteins that allow them to traverse the skin and enter cells.

Mirkin has just finished presenting (Feb. 15, 2013 and Feb. 17, 2013) more information about spherical nucleic acids and their implications at the AAAS  (American Association for the Advancement of Science) 2013 meeting in Boston, Massachusetts. From the Feb. 15, 2013 news release on EurekAlert,

Northwestern University’s Chad A. Mirkin, a world-renowned leader in nanotechnology research and its application, has invented and developed a powerful material that could revolutionize biomedicine: spherical nucleic acids (SNAs).

…

Potential applications include using SNAs to carry nucleic acid-based therapeutics to the brain for the treatment of glioblastoma, the most aggressive form of brain cancer, as well as other neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Mirkin is aggressively pursuing treatments for such diseases with Alexander H. Stegh, an assistant professor of neurology at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine.

“These structures are really quite spectacular and incredibly functional,” Mirkin said. “People don’t typically think about DNA in spherical form, but this novel arrangement of nucleic acids imparts interesting chemical and physical properties that are very different from conventional nucleic acids.”

Spherical nucleic acids consist of densely packed, highly oriented nucleic acids arranged on the surface of a nanoparticle, typically gold or silver.  [emphasis mine] The tiny non-toxic balls, each roughly 15 nanometers in diameter, can do things the familiar but more cumbersome double helix can’t do:

  • SNAs can naturally enter cells and effect gene knockdown, making SNAs a superior tool for treating genetic diseases using gene regulation technology.
  • SNAs can easily cross formidable barriers in the human body, including the blood-brain barrier and the layers that make up skin.
  • SNAs don’t elicit an immune response, and they resist degradation, resulting in longer lifetimes in the body.

“The field of medicine needs new constructs and strategies for treating disease,” Mirkin said. “Many of the ways we treat disease are based on old methods and materials. Nanotechnology offers the ability to rapidly create new structures with properties that are very different from conventional forms of matter.”

…

“We now can go after a whole new set of diseases,” Mirkin said. “Thanks to the Human Genome Project and all of the genomics research over the last two decades, we have an enormous number of known targets. And we can use the same tool for each, the spherical nucleic acid. We simply change the sequence to match the target gene. That’s the power of gene regulation technology.”

###

A member of President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, Mirkin is known for invention and development of biological and chemical diagnostic systems based upon nanomaterials. He is the inventor and chief developer of Dip-Pen Nanolithography, a groundbreaking nanoscale fabrication and analytical tool, and is the founder of four Chicago-based companies: AuraSense, AuraSense Therapeutics, Nanosphere and NanoInk.

Mirkin, in addition to his work with spherical nucleic acids, has been busy with other nanoparticles and possible dreams of a new ‘periodic table of elements’, from the Feb. 17, 2013 news release on EurekAlert,

Forging a new periodic table using nanostructures

Northwestern University’s Chad A. Mirkin, …, has developed a completely new set of building blocks that is based on nanoparticles and DNA. Using these tools, scientists will be able to build — from the bottom up, just as nature does — new and useful structures.

…

“We have a new set of building blocks,” Mirkin said. “Instead of taking what nature gives you, we can control every property of the new material we make. We’ve always had this vision of building matter and controlling architecture from the bottom up, and now we’ve shown it can be done.”

Using nanoparticles and DNA, Mirkin has built more than 200 different crystal structures with 17 different particle arrangements. Some of the lattice types can be found in nature, but he also has built new structures that have no naturally occurring mineral counterpart.

…

Mirkin can make new materials and arrangements of particles by controlling the size, shape, type and location of nanoparticles within a given particle lattice. He has developed a set of design rules that allow him to control almost every property of a material.

New materials developed using his method could help improve the efficiency of optics, electronics and energy storage technologies. “These same nanoparticle building blocks have already found wide-spread commercial utility in biology and medicine as diagnostic probes for markers of disease,” Mirkin added.

With this present advance, Mirkin uses nanoparticles as “atoms” and DNA as “bonds.” He starts with a nanoparticle, which could be gold, silver, platinum or a quantum dot, for example. The core material is selected depending on what physical properties the final structure should have.

He then attaches hundreds of strands of DNA (oligonucleotides) to the particle. The oligonucleotide’s DNA sequence and length determine how bonds form between nanoparticles and guide the formation of specific crystal lattices.

“This constitutes a completely new class of building blocks in materials science that gives you a type of programmability that is extraordinarily versatile and powerful,” Mirkin said. “It provides nanotechnologists for the first time the ability to tailor properties of materials in a highly programmable way from the bottom up.”

If I read these two news releases rightly, the process (nanoparticles as atoms and DNA as bonds), Mirkin uses to create new structures is the same process he has used to create spherical nucleic acids. Given Mirkin’s entrepreneurial inclinations, I am curious as to how many and what kind of patents might be ‘protecting’ this work.

Study tracks evolution of world’s first 500 bio-nano firms

2 Replies

Elicia Maine, a professor at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business, is presenting right now (9:45 am – 12:45 pm EST, Feb. 18, 2013) at the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) 2013 meeting in Boston, Massachusetts in a session titled, Confluence of Streams of Knowledge: Biotechnology and Nanotechnology, about her study on bio-nano firms. Here’s more about her and her work in a Feb. 15, 2013 news release from Simon Fraser University (SFU), Note: I have removed a link,

Elicia Maine, an SFU associate professor of technology management and strategy at the Beedie School of Business, has co-authored a study that puts bio-nano firms under the microscope.

They are a new breed of business at the intersection of biotechnology and nanotechnology.

Maine will unveil a groundbreaking study on bio-nano firms in a seminar she has co-organized (with James Utterback, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor) at the world’s largest science research meeting.

Maine’s presentation, followed by a panel discussion, will take place at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) convention in Boston, Massachusetts on Monday, Feb. 18, 9:45 a.m.-12:45 p.m. (Pacific time) Location: Room 300, Hynes Convention Centre.

The study, the first of its kind, tracks the evolution of the world’s first 500 bio-nano firms from their inception until now. “We are interested in seeing when these firms developed or acquired nanotechnology and biotechnology capabilities, and what they have done with those capabilities in terms of integrating the knowledge into new products and processes,” says Maine.

“We’ve classified the pioneers of this new breed of firms at the confluence of biotechnology and nanotechnology based on their primary role in innovation. They cover the areas of biopharma, drug delivery, diagnostics, biomaterials, medical devices, suppliers and instrumentation, and bioinformatics.”

Unfortunately, this is an unpublished study (I haven’t been able to find any reference to it online) but there is a video of Maine talking about her research on bio-nano firms,

ETA Feb. 21, 2012, There was a second news release from SFU dated Feb. 18, 2012, which provided some additional information and quotes about Maine’s research,

The study’s authors have identified, classified and analysed more than 500 of the world’s first companies in the emerging bio-nano sector. Their data shows these companies are taking hold not just in technology hotbeds such as California’s Silicon Valley and the northeastern United States but also across the country, and in Europe.

“We have watched the ecosystem emerge in terms of the number and type of firms entering,” says Maine.  “This confluence of technology silos in the emerging bio-nano sector is enabling radical innovation, new products and connections that didn’t exist before. Some of the things we’re talking about are targeted drug delivery, tissue engineering, enhanced medical diagnostics and new therapeutics.”

Between 2005 and 2011, the number of bio-nano firms nearly doubled to 507, with more than 100 of them emerging in North America alone.

Bacteria that glow and light your way

Leave a reply

It’s a light show of sorts but it involves bacteria and fluorescent protein,

Thanks to the Dec. 19, 2011 news item on Nanwerk, I was able to access both the video and some additional information,

In an example of life imitating art, biologists and bioengineers at UC [University of California] San Diego have created a living neon sign composed of millions of bacterial cells that periodically fluoresce in unison like blinking light bulbs. Their achievement, detailed in this week’s advance online issue of the journal Nature  (“A sensing array of radically coupled genetic ‘biopixels'”), involved attaching a fluorescent protein to the biological clocks of the bacteria, synchronizing the clocks of the thousands of bacteria within a colony, then synchronizing thousands of the blinking bacterial colonies to glow on and off in unison.

Here’s how scientists think this could be useful,

 Using the same method to create the flashing signs, the researchers engineered a simple bacterial sensor capable of detecting low levels of arsenic. In this biological sensor, decreases in the frequency of the oscillations of the cells’ blinking pattern indicate the presence and amount of the arsenic poison.

Because bacteria are sensitive to many kinds of environmental pollutants and organisms, the scientists believe this approach could be also used to design low cost bacterial biosensors capable of detecting an array of heavy metal pollutants and disease-causing organisms. And because the senor is composed of living organisms, it can respond to changes in the presence or amount of the toxins over time unlike many chemical sensors.

“These kinds of living sensors are intriguing as they can serve to continuously monitor a given sample over long periods of time, whereas most detection kits are used for a one-time measurement,” said Jeff Hasty, a professor of biology and bioengineering at UC San Diego who headed the research team in the university’s Division of Biological Sciences and BioCircuits Institute. “Because the bacteria respond in different ways to different concentrations by varying the frequency of their blinking pattern, they can provide a continual update on how dangerous a toxin or pathogen is at any one time.”

There are more details in the news item on Nanowerk.

Scientists have been experimenting with other uses for fluorescent bacteria, lighting. From the Nov. 28, 2011 article by Jaymi Heimbuch for Treehugger,

Here, Philips has shown off a concept for a light that runs on not grid electricity, not solar power, not even wind power. Nope, it runs on bacteria.

According to Philips, “The concept explores the use of bioluminescent bacteria, which are fed with methane and composted material (drawn from the methane digester in the Microbial Home system). Alternatively the cellular light array can be filled with fluorescent proteins that emit different frequencies of light.”

I gather the concept isn’t ready for houselighting yet but Philips does have some proposals (from the Philips Bio-light page),

 Bioluminescence produces low-intensity light, more suitable for tracing, warning, ambience and indication than functional illumination. Its speed of generation, being dependent on chemical reaction, is slower than most conventional light sources and the life form itself must be kept alive. But it needs no wires and is independent of the electricity grid. The living nature of the material provides interesting possibilities for changing, unpredictable, environmentally responsible ambient effects.

…

    • Night-time road markings, eg bioluminescent plants that indicate where the edge of the road is
    • Warning strips on flights of stairs, kerbsides etc
    • Informational markings in low-light settings, eg. theatres, cinemas, nightclubs
    • Diagnostic indicators, eg. a colored body health map in the home apothecary, pollution levels, local bacterial ecology etc
    • Monitoring the status of diseases like diabetes in individual patients, using bioluminescent biosensors

New genres of atmospheric interior lighting with, for example, possible therapeutic and mood-enhancing effects.

There you have it, bacteria will light the way.

New nanotechnology standards: ISO/TS 80004-4:2011 and ISO/TS 80004-5:2011

Leave a reply

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has released two new standards for terms and definitions. From the Nov. 23, 2011 news item on Nanowerk,

ISO/TS 80004-4:2011 gives terms and definitions for materials in the field of nanotechnologies where one or more components are nanoscale regions and the materials exhibit properties attributable to the presence of those nanoscale regions. It is intended to facilitate communications between organizations and individuals in industry and those who interact with them.

…

ISO/TS 80004-5:2011 lists terms and definitions related to the interface between nanomaterials and biology. It is intended to facilitate communications between scientists, engineers, technologists, designers, manufacturers, regulators, NGOs, consumer organizations, members of the public and others …

ISO/TS 80004-4:2011 can be purchased for 58 Swiss Francs while ISO/TS 80004-5:2011 can be purchased for 50 Swiss Francs.

Memristors and proteins

Leave a reply

The memristor, a two-terminal circuit element joining the resistor, capacitor, and inductor, has until now been demonstrated using nonbiological materials such as metal oxides, carbon, etc. Researchers in Singapore have reported in a paper (in the Sept. 5, 2011 online edition of Small, Protein-Based Memristive Nanodevice)  that a memristive nanodevice can be based on a protein. From the Sept. 15, 2011 Spotlight article by Michael Berger on Nanowerk,

Memristors – the fourth fundamental two-terminal circuit element following the resistor, the capacitor, and the inductor – have attracted intensive attention owing to their potential applications for instance in nanoelectronic memories, computer logic, or neuromorphic computer architectures.

…

“Previous work on memristors were based on man-made inorganic/organic materials, so we asked the question whether it is possible to demonstrate memristors based on natural materials,” Xiaodong Chen, an assistant professor in the School of Materials Science & Engineering at Nanyang University, tells Nanowerk. “Many activities in life exhibit memory behavior and substantial research has focused on biomolecules serving as computing elements, hence, natural biomaterials may have potential to be exploited as electronic memristors.”

…

This work provides a direct proof that natural biomaterials, especially redox proteins, could be used to fabricate solid state devices with transport junctions, which have potential applications in functional nanocircuits.

My last posting about memristors was April 13, 2011, Blood, memristors, cyborgs plus brain-controlled computers, prosthetics, and art.

ETA Sept. 21, 2011: Dexter Johnson at Nanoclast (on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers website) offers another take on memristors in his Sept. 20,2011 posting, Memristors Go Biological. I particularly liked this bit,

It’s been just three years since the memristor was identified so if statistical norms of commercialization are in place we can expect another four years of waiting before we see this material in our smart phones. In fact, this timeline is pretty close to HP’s expectations of 2014 as a target date for its incorporation into electronic devices.

During this time researchers have not been and will not be sitting on their hands while engineers work out scalability and yields.

Heat and light signifying much from a new nanoparticle at the University of Toronto

Leave a reply

Paraphrasing from Shakespeare’s play MacBeth for this piece is a stretch but I can’t resist. The title comes from the speech MacBeth gives on hearing of his wife’s death (from The Tragedy of MacBeth webpage on the MIT website),

… Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing. [emphasis mine]

Enough of the digression. Scientists at the Princess Margaret Hospital and the University of Toronto, have engineered a nanoparticle that uses light and heat to destroy tumours and light and sound to find and image tumours. From the March 20, 2011 news release on the University of Toronto website,

“In the lab, we combined two naturally occurring molecules (chlorophyll and lipid) to create a unique nanoparticle that shows promise for numerous diverse light-based (biophotonic) applications,” Professor [Gang] Zheng said. “The structure of the nanoparticle, which is like a miniature and colourful water balloon, means it can also be filled with drugs to treat the tumor it is targeting.”

It works this way, explains first author Jonathan Lovell, a doctoral student at IBBME [Institute of Biomaterials & Biomedical Engineering] and OCI [Ontario Cancer Institute]: “Photothermal therapy uses light and heat to destroy tumors. With the nanoparticle’s ability to absorb so much light and accumulate in tumors, a laser can rapidly heat the tumor to a temperature of 60 degrees and destroy it. The nanoparticle can also be used for photoacoustic imaging, which combines light and sound to produce a very high-resolution image that can be used to find and target tumors.”

Here’s what makes this such a breakthrough,

This nanomaterial is also non-toxic, explained Professor Warren Chan of IBBME, another author of the paper. “Jon Lovell and Gang Zheng created a material that doesn’t have metals, [which] means no toxins, but with similar tunable properties to its metal nanostructure brother,” he said. This is the first reported organic nanostructure with such a unique feature, he noted, and so provides a significant opportunity to explore unique designs of organic nanostructures for biomedical applications without concerns regarding toxicity.

I recently mentioned Professor Zheng’s work in the context of a recent funding announcement from the Canadian Space Agency and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research in my March 17, 2011 posting.

If I recall rightly and this is a pretty simple explanation, organic chemistry includes the element of carbon while inorganic excludes it.

Nanobiotechnology research cooperation between India and Australia

2 Replies

The Nov. 28, 2010 news item on Nanowerk features a nanotechnology project which seems to have been 120 years in the making,

Professor Den Hollander Vice-Chancellor and President of Deakin University was excited as well about this partnership and said, ‘Alfred Deakin first recognized the possibilities of India and Australia working together nearly 120 years ago. It is pleasing for everyone at Deakin and TERI [The Energy and Resources Institute] to be involved in a partnership that not only fulfils his prophecies but which has mutual benefits for both nations,” She further added, ‘For Deakin to be partnered with such an organization led by a man of Dr. Pachauri’s [TERI, Director-General] standing is a massive complement. We hope to use the agreement with TERI as a model for other partners.’

Dr. R. K. Pachauri is a world-renowned economist and the head of the Nobel Prize winning UN Climate panel. TERI, The Energy and Resources Institute in India, and Deakin University in Australia have recently signed a memorandum of understanding,

The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), India and Deakin University, Australia signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to announce the setting up of a Centre of Excellence, the TERI-Deakin Nano Biotechnology Research Centre in the field of Nano Biotechnology in India. This development is an outcome of TERI’s core capability of knowledge creation and development of efficient, environment friendly technologies and Deakin’s India Research Initiative (DIRI) which is committed towards establishing a lasting association with industry partners in India to chart a vibrant culture of research and scholastic excellence.

The initiative is also aimed at bridging the gap between industry and academia through research and collaboration of world leading experts, which will enable efficiency, effectiveness and provide solutions for a sustainable future through the utilization of biotechnology. The TERI- Deakin Nano Biotechnology Research Centre will bring to the fore Deakin’s expertise in the design and characterization of novel nanomaterials while TERI’s Biotechnology and Management of Bioresource Division (BMBD) will bring their wealth of experience in biotech applications in pharmacology, food, agriculture and environmental areas.