Tag Archives: W. M. Keck Foundation

CRISPR-CAS9 and gold

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As so often happens in the sciences, now that the initial euphoria has expended itself problems (and solutions) with CRISPR ((clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats))-CAAS9 are being disclosed to those of us who are not experts. From an Oct. 3, 2017 article by Bob Yirka for phys.org,

A team of researchers from the University of California and the University of Tokyo has found a way to use the CRISPR gene editing technique that does not rely on a virus for delivery. In their paper published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering, the group describes the new technique, how well it works and improvements that need to be made to make it a viable gene editing tool.

CRISPR-Cas9 has been in the news a lot lately because it allows researchers to directly edit genes—either disabling unwanted parts or replacing them altogether. But despite many success stories, the technique still suffers from a major deficit that prevents it from being used as a true medical tool—it sometimes makes mistakes. Those mistakes can cause small or big problems for a host depending on what goes wrong. Prior research has suggested that the majority of mistakes are due to delivery problems, which means that a replacement for the virus part of the technique is required. In this new effort, the researchers report that they have discovered just a such a replacement, and it worked so well that it was able to repair a gene mutation in a Duchenne muscular dystrophy mouse model. The team has named the new technique CRISPR-Gold, because a gold nanoparticle was used to deliver the gene editing molecules instead of a virus.

An Oct. 2, 2017 article by Abby Olena for The Scientist lays out the CRISPR-CAS9 problems the scientists are trying to solve (Note: Links have been removed),

While promising, applications of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing have so far been limited by the challenges of delivery—namely, how to get all the CRISPR parts to every cell that needs them. In a study published today (October 2) in Nature Biomedical Engineering, researchers have successfully repaired a mutation in the gene for dystrophin in a mouse model of Duchenne muscular dystrophy by injecting a vehicle they call CRISPR-Gold, which contains the Cas9 protein, guide RNA, and donor DNA, all wrapped around a tiny gold ball.

The authors have made “great progress in the gene editing area,” says Tufts University biomedical engineer Qiaobing Xu, who did not participate in the work but penned an accompanying commentary. Because their approach is nonviral, Xu explains, it will minimize the potential off-target effects that result from constant Cas9 activity, which occurs when users deliver the Cas9 template with a viral vector.

Duchenne muscular dystrophy is a degenerative disease of the muscles caused by a lack of the protein dystrophin. In about a third of patients, the gene for dystrophin has small deletions or single base mutations that render it nonfunctional, which makes this gene an excellent candidate for gene editing. Researchers have previously used viral delivery of CRISPR-Cas9 components to delete the mutated exon and achieve clinical improvements in mouse models of the disease.

…

“In this paper, we were actually able to correct [the gene for] dystrophin back to the wild-type sequence” via homology-directed repair (HDR), coauthor Niren Murthy, a drug delivery researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, tells The Scientist. “The other way of treating this is to do something called exon skipping, which is where you delete some of the exons and you can get dystrophin to be produced, but it’s not [as functional as] the wild-type protein.”

The research team created CRISPR-Gold by covering a central gold nanoparticle with DNA that they modified so it would stick to the particle. This gold-conjugated DNA bound the donor DNA needed for HDR, which the Cas9 protein and guide RNA bound to in turn. They coated the entire complex with a polymer that seems to trigger endocytosis and then facilitate escape of the Cas9 protein, guide RNA, and template DNA from endosomes within cells.

In order to do HDR, “you have to provide the cell [with] the Cas9 enzyme, guide RNA by which you target Cas9 to a particular part of the genome, and a big chunk of DNA, which will be used as a template to edit the mutant sequence to wild-type,” explains coauthor Irina Conboy, who studies tissue repair at the University of California, Berkeley. “They all have to be present at the same time and at the same place, so in our system you have a nanoparticle which simultaneously delivers all of those three key components in their active state.”

…

Olena’s article carries on to describe how the team created CRISPR-Gold and more.

Additional technical details are available in an Oct. 3, 2017 University of California at Berkeley news release by Brett Israel (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item (Note: A link has been removed) ,

Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have engineered a new way to deliver CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology inside cells and have demonstrated in mice that the technology can repair the mutation that causes Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a severe muscle-wasting disease. A new study shows that a single injection of CRISPR-Gold, as the new delivery system is called, into mice with Duchenne muscular dystrophy led to an 18-times-higher correction rate and a two-fold increase in a strength and agility test compared to control groups.

Diagram of CRISPR-Gold

CRISPR–Gold is composed of 15 nanometer gold nanoparticles that are conjugated to thiol-modified oligonucleotides (DNA-Thiol), which are hybridized with single-stranded donor DNA and subsequently complexed with Cas9 and encapsulated by a polymer that disrupts the endosome of the cell.

Since 2012, when study co-author Jennifer Doudna, a professor of molecular and cell biology and of chemistry at UC Berkeley, and colleague Emmanuelle Charpentier, of the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, repurposed the Cas9 protein to create a cheap, precise and easy-to-use gene editor, researchers have hoped that therapies based on CRISPR-Cas9 would one day revolutionize the treatment of genetic diseases. Yet developing treatments for genetic diseases remains a big challenge in medicine. This is because most genetic diseases can be cured only if the disease-causing gene mutation is corrected back to the normal sequence, and this is impossible to do with conventional therapeutics.

CRISPR/Cas9, however, can correct gene mutations by cutting the mutated DNA and triggering homology-directed DNA repair. However, strategies for safely delivering the necessary components (Cas9, guide RNA that directs Cas9 to a specific gene, and donor DNA) into cells need to be developed before the potential of CRISPR-Cas9-based therapeutics can be realized. A common technique to deliver CRISPR-Cas9 into cells employs viruses, but that technique has a number of complications. CRISPR-Gold does not need viruses.

In the new study, research lead by the laboratories of Berkeley bioengineering professors Niren Murthy and Irina Conboy demonstrated that their novel approach, called CRISPR-Gold because gold nanoparticles are a key component, can deliver Cas9 – the protein that binds and cuts DNA – along with guide RNA and donor DNA into the cells of a living organism to fix a gene mutation.

“CRISPR-Gold is the first example of a delivery vehicle that can deliver all of the CRISPR components needed to correct gene mutations, without the use of viruses,” Murthy said.

The study was published October 2 [2017] in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering.

CRISPR-Gold repairs DNA mutations through a process called homology-directed repair. Scientists have struggled to develop homology-directed repair-based therapeutics because they require activity at the same place and time as Cas9 protein, an RNA guide that recognizes the mutation and donor DNA to correct the mutation.

To overcome these challenges, the Berkeley scientists invented a delivery vessel that binds all of these components together, and then releases them when the vessel is inside a wide variety of cell types, triggering homology directed repair. CRISPR-Gold’s gold nanoparticles coat the donor DNA and also bind Cas9. When injected into mice, their cells recognize a marker in CRISPR-Gold and then import the delivery vessel. Then, through a series of cellular mechanisms, CRISPR-Gold is released into the cells’ cytoplasm and breaks apart, rapidly releasing Cas9 and donor DNA.

Schematic of CRISPR-Gold's method of action

CRISPR-Gold’s method of action (Click to enlarge).

A single injection of CRISPR-Gold into muscle tissue of mice that model Duchenne muscular dystrophy restored 5.4 percent of the dystrophin gene, which causes the disease, to the wild- type, or normal, sequence. This correction rate was approximately 18 times higher than in mice treated with Cas9 and donor DNA by themselves, which experienced only a 0.3 percent correction rate.

Importantly, the study authors note, CRISPR-Gold faithfully restored the normal sequence of dystrophin, which is a significant improvement over previously published approaches that only removed the faulty part of the gene, making it shorter and converting one disease into another, milder disease.

CRISPR-Gold was also able to reduce tissue fibrosis – the hallmark of diseases where muscles do not function properly – and enhanced strength and agility in mice with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. CRISPR-Gold-treated mice showed a two-fold increase in hanging time in a common test for mouse strength and agility, compared to mice injected with a control.

“These experiments suggest that it will be possible to develop non-viral CRISPR therapeutics that can safely correct gene mutations, via the process of homology-directed repair, by simply developing nanoparticles that can simultaneously encapsulate all of the CRISPR components,” Murthy said.

CRISPR-Cas9

CRISPR in action: A model of the Cas9 protein cutting a double-stranded piece of DNA

The study found that CRISPR-Gold’s approach to Cas9 protein delivery is safer than viral delivery of CRISPR, which, in addition to toxicity, amplifies the side effects of Cas9 through continuous expression of this DNA-cutting enzyme. When the research team tested CRISPR-Gold’s gene-editing capability in mice, they found that CRISPR-Gold efficiently corrected the DNA mutation that causes Duchenne muscular dystrophy, with minimal collateral DNA damage.

The researchers quantified CRISPR-Gold’s off-target DNA damage and found damage levels similar to the that of a typical DNA sequencing error in a typical cell that was not exposed to CRISPR (0.005 – 0.2 percent). To test for possible immunogenicity, the blood stream cytokine profiles of mice were analyzed at 24 hours and two weeks after the CRISPR-Gold injection. CRISPR-Gold did not cause an acute up-regulation of inflammatory cytokines in plasma, after multiple injections, or weight loss, suggesting that CRISPR-Gold can be used multiple times safely, and that it has a high therapeutic window for gene editing in muscle tissue.

“CRISPR-Gold and, more broadly, CRISPR-nanoparticles open a new way for safer, accurately controlled delivery of gene-editing tools,” Conboy said. “Ultimately, these techniques could be developed into a new medicine for Duchenne muscular dystrophy and a number of other genetic diseases.”

A clinical trial will be needed to discern whether CRISPR-Gold is an effective treatment for genetic diseases in humans. Study co-authors Kunwoo Lee and Hyo Min Park have formed a start-up company, GenEdit (Murthy has an ownership stake in GenEdit), which is focused on translating the CRISPR-Gold technology into humans. The labs of Murthy and Conboy are also working on the next generation of particles that can deliver CRISPR into tissues from the blood stream and would preferentially target adult stem cells, which are considered the best targets for gene correction because stem and progenitor cells are capable of gene editing, self-renewal and differentiation.

“Genetic diseases cause devastating levels of mortality and morbidity, and new strategies for treating them are greatly needed,” Murthy said. “CRISPR-Gold was able to correct disease-causing gene mutations in vivo, via the non-viral delivery of Cas9 protein, guide RNA and donor DNA, and therefore has the potential to develop into a therapeutic for treating genetic diseases.”

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the W.M. Keck Foundation, the Moore Foundation, the Li Ka Shing Foundation, Calico, Packer, Roger’s and SENS, and the Center of Innovation (COI) Program of the Japan Science and Technology Agency.

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

Nanoparticle delivery of Cas9 ribonucleoprotein and donor DNA in vivo induces homology-directed DNA repair by Kunwoo Lee, Michael Conboy, Hyo Min Park, Fuguo Jiang, Hyun Jin Kim, Mark A. Dewitt, Vanessa A. Mackley, Kevin Chang, Anirudh Rao, Colin Skinner, Tamanna Shobha, Melod Mehdipour, Hui Liu, Wen-chin Huang, Freeman Lan, Nicolas L. Bray, Song Li, Jacob E. Corn, Kazunori Kataoka, Jennifer A. Doudna, Irina Conboy, & Niren Murthy. Nature Biomedical Engineering (2017) doi:10.1038/s41551-017-0137-2 Published online: 02 October 2017

This paper is behind a paywall.

Metallic nanoflowers produce neuron-like fractals

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I was a bit surprised to find that this University of Oregon story was about a patent. Here’s more from a July 28, 2015 news item on Azonano,

Richard Taylor’s vision of using artificial fractal-based implants to restore sight to the blind — part of a far-reaching concept that won an innovation award this year from the White House — is now covered under a broad U.S. patent.

The patent goes far beyond efforts to use the emerging technology to restore eyesight. It covers all fractal-designed electronic implants that link signaling activity with nerves for any purpose in animal and human biology.

Fractals are objects with irregular curves or shapes. “They are a trademark building block of nature,” said Taylor, a professor of physics and director of the Materials Science Institute at the University of Oregon [UO]. “In math, that property is self-similarity. Trees, clouds, rivers, galaxies, lungs and neurons are fractals. What we hope to do is adapt the technology to nature’s geometry.”

Named in U.S. patent 9079017 are Taylor, the UO, Taylor’s research collaborator Simon Brown, and Brown’s home institution, the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.

A July 28, 2015 University of Oregon news release (also on EurekAlert) by Jim Barlow, which originated the news item, continues the patent celebration,

“We’re very delighted,” Taylor said. “The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has recognized the novelty and utility of our general concept, but there is a lot to do. We want to get all of the fundamental science sorted out. We’re looking at least another couple of years of basic science before moving forward.”

The patent solidifies the relationship between the two universities, said Charles Williams, associate vice president for innovation at the UO. “This is still in the very early days. This project has attracted national attention, awards and grants.

“We hope to engage the right set of partners to develop the technology over time as the concept moves into potentially vast forms of medical applications,” Williams added. “Dr. Taylor’s interdisciplinary science is a hallmark of the creativity at the University of Oregon and a great example of the international research collaborations that our faculty engage in every day.”

Here’s an image illustrating the ‘fractal neurons’,

FractalImplant

Caption: Retinal neurons, outlined in yellow, attach to and follows branches of a fractal interconnect. Such connections, says University of Oregon physicist Richard Taylor, could some day help to treat eye diseases such as macular degeneration. Credit: Courtesy of Richard Taylor

The news release goes on to describe the ‘fractal approach’ to eye implants which is markedly different from the implants entering the marketplace,

Taylor raised the idea of a fractal-based approach to treat eye diseases in a 2011 article in Physics World, writing that it could overcome problems associated with efforts to insert photodiodes behind the eyes. Current chip technology doesn’t allow sufficient connections with neurons.

“The wiring — the neurons — in the retina is fractal, but the chips are not fractal,” Taylor said. His vision, based on research with Brown, is to grow nanoflowers seeded from nanoparticles of metals that self assemble in a natural process, producing fractals that mimic and communicate with neurons.

It is conceivable, Taylor said, that fractal interconnects — as the implants are called in the patent — could be shaped so they network with like-shaped neurons to address narrow needs, such as a feedback loop for the sensation of touch from a prosthetic arm or leg to the brain.

Such implants would overcome the biological rejection of implants with smooth surfaces or those randomly patterned that have been developed in a trial-and-error approach to link to neurons.

Once perfected, he said, the implants would generate an electrical field that would fool a sea of glial cells that insulate and protect neurons from foreign invaders. Fractal interconnects would allow electrical signals to operate in “a safety zone biologically” that avoids toxicity issues.

“The patent covers any generic interface for connecting any electronics to any nerve,” Taylor said, adding that fractal interconnects are not electrodes. “Our interface is multifunctional. The primary thing is to get the electrical field into the system so that reaches the neurons and induces the signal.”

Taylor’s proposal for using fractal-based technology earned the top prize in a contest held by the innovation company InnoCentive. Taylor was honored in April [2015] at a meeting of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

The competition was sponsored by a collaboration of science philanthropies including the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the W.M. Keck Foundation, the Kavli Foundation, the Templeton Foundation and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund.

You can find out more about InnoCentive here. As for other types of artificial eye implants, the latest here is a June 30, 2015 post titled, Clinical trial for bionic eye (artificial retinal implant) shows encouraging results (safety and efficacy).

Sea sapphires: now you see them, now you don’t and more about structural colour/color

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The structural colour of the sea sapphire

Scientists are studying the disappearing act of this ocean-dwelling copepod. Credit: Kaj Maney, www.liquidguru.com Courtesy: American Chemical Society


Scientists are studying the disappearing act of this ocean-dwelling copepod.
Credit: Kaj Maney, www.liquidguru.com Courtesy: American Chemical Society

Now, you’ve seen a sea sapphire. Here’s more about them and the interest they hold for experts in photonics, from a July 15, 2015 news item on ScienceDaily,

Sapphirina, or sea sapphire, has been called “the most beautiful animal you’ve never seen,” and it could be one of the most magical. Some of the tiny, little-known copepods appear to flash in and out of brilliantly colored blue, violet or red existence. Now scientists are figuring out the trick to their hues and their invisibility. The findings appear in the Journal of the American Chemical Society and could inspire the next generation of optical technologies.

A July 15, 2015 American Chemical Society (ACS) news release, which originated the news item, provides more detail,

Copepods are tiny aquatic crustaceans that live in both fresh and salt water. Some males of the ocean-dwelling Sapphirina genus display striking, iridescent colors that scientists think play a role in communication and mate recognition. The shimmering animals’ colors result when light bounces off of the thin, hexagonal crystal plates that cover their backs. These plates also help them vanish, if only fleetingly. Scientists didn’t know specifically what factors contributed to creating different shades. Scientists at the Weizmann Institute [Israel] and the Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences in Eilat [Israel] wanted to investigate the matter.

The researchers measured the light reflectance — which determines color — of live Sapphirina males and the spacing between crystal layers. They found that changes of reflectance depended on the thickness of the spacing. And for at least one particular species, when light hits an animal at a 45-degree angle, reflectance shifts out of the visible light range and into the ultraviolet, and it practically disappears. Their results could help inform the design of artificial photonic crystal structures, which have many potential uses in reflective coatings, optical mirrors and optical displays.

To sum this up, the colour and the invisibility properties are due to thin, hexagonal crystal plates and the spacing of these plates, in other words, structural colour, which is usually achieved at the nanoscale.

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

Structural Basis for the Brilliant Colors of the Sapphirinid Copepods by Dvir Gur, Ben Leshem, Maria Pierantoni, Viviana Farstey, Dan Oron, Steve Weiner, and Lia Addadi. J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2015, 137 (26), pp 8408–8411 DOI: 10.1021/jacs.5b05289 Publication Date (Web): June 22, 2015

Copyright © 2015 American Chemical Society

This paper is behind a paywall.

For anyone who’s interested, Lynn Kimlicka has a nice explanation of structural colour in a July 22, 2015 posting on the Something About Science blog where she discusses some recent research iridescence in bird feathers and synthetic melanin. She also shares a picture of her budgie and its iridescent feathers. The ‘melanin’ research was mentioned here in a May 19, 2015 posting where I also provide a link to a great 2013 piece on structural throughout the animal and plant kingdoms by Cristina Luiggi for The Scientist.

Understanding how nanostructures can affect optical properties could be leading to new ways of managing light. A July 23, 2015 news item on ScienceDaily describes a project at the University of Delaware dedicated to “changing the color of light,”

Researchers at the University of Delaware have received a $1 million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation to explore a new idea that could improve solar cells, medical imaging and even cancer treatments. Simply put, they want to change the color of light.

A July 23, 2015 University of Delaware (UD) news release, which originated the news item, provides more information about the proposed research,

“A ray of light contains millions and millions of individual units of light called photons,” says project leader Matthew Doty. “The energy of each photon is directly related to the color of the light — a photon of red light has less energy than a photon of blue light. You can’t simply turn a red photon into a blue one, but you can combine the energy from two or more red photons to make one blue photon.”

This process, called “photon upconversion,” isn’t new, Doty says. However, the UD team’s approach to it is.

They want to design a new kind of semiconductor nanostructure that will act like a ratchet. It will absorb two red photons, one after the other, to push an electron into an excited state when it can emit a single high-energy (blue) photon.

These nanostructures will be so teeny they can only be viewed when magnified a million times under a high-powered electron microscope.

“Think of the electrons in this structure as if they were at a water park,” Doty says. “The first red photon has only enough energy to push an electron half-way up the ladder of the water slide. The second red photon pushes it the rest of the way up. Then the electron goes down the slide, releasing all of that energy in a single process, with the emission of the blue photon. The trick is to make sure the electron doesn’t slip down the ladder before the second photon arrives. The semiconductor ratchet structure is how we trap the electron in the middle of the ladder until the second photon arrives to push it the rest of the way up.”

The UD team will develop new semiconductor structures containing multiple layers of different materials, such as aluminum arsenide and gallium bismuth arsenide, each only a few nanometers thick. This “tailored landscape” will control the flow of electrons into states with varying potential energy, turning once-wasted photons into useful energy.

The UD team has shown theoretically that their semiconductors could reach an upconversion efficiency of 86 percent, which would be a vast improvement over the 36 percent efficiency demonstrated by today’s best materials. What’s more, Doty says, the amount of light absorbed and energy emitted by the structures could be customized for a variety of applications, from lightbulbs to laser-guided surgery.

How do you even begin to make structures so tiny they can only be seen with an electron microscope? In one technique the UD team will use, called molecular beam epitaxy, nanostructures will be built by depositing layers of atoms one at a time. Each structure will be tested to see how well it absorbs and emits light, and the results will be used to tailor the structure to improve performance.

The researchers also will develop a milk-like solution filled with millions of identical individual nanoparticles, each one containing multiple layers of different materials. The multiple layers of this structure, like multiple candy shells in an M&M, will implement the photon ratchet idea. Through such work, the team envisions a future upconversion “paint” that could be easily applied to solar cells, windows and other commercial products.

Improving medical tests and treatments

While the initial focus of the three-year project will be on improving solar energy harvesting, the team also will explore biomedical applications.

A number of diagnostic tests and medical treatments, ranging from CT [computed tomography] and PET [positron emission tomography] scans to chemotherapy, rely on the release of fluorescent dyes and pharmaceutical drugs. Ideally, such payloads are delivered both at specific disease sites and at specific times, but this is hard to control in practice.

The UD team aims to develop an upconversion nanoparticle that can be triggered by light to release its payload. The goal is to achieve the controlled release of drug therapies even deep within diseased human tissue while reducing the peripheral damage to normal tissue by minimizing the laser power required.

“This is high-risk, high-reward research,” Doty says. “High-risk because we don’t yet have proof-of-concept data. High-reward because it has such a huge potential impact in renewable energy to medicine. It’s amazing to think that this same technology could be used to harvest more solar energy and to treat cancer. We’re excited to get started!”

That’s it for structural colour/color today.

Call for nominations: US National Academies Communication Awards

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The Jan. 16, 2013 press release from US National Academies announced a call for nominations for communication in various media including books, film/radio/tv, magazine/newspaper, and online materials that have been published in the US,

The Keck Futures Initiative—a program of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine, with the support of the W. M. Keck Foundation—will award $20,000 prizes to individuals or teams who have developed creative, original work that addresses issues and advances in science, engineering and/or medicine for the general public. Nominations are accepted in four categories: Book; Film/Radio/TV; Magazine/Newspaper; and Online.

ELIGIBILITY
To be considered for a 2013 Communication Award, the work should:

  • be accessible and appeal to a broad, public audience;
  • demonstrate clarity, creativity, originality, and accuracy;
  • address issues and/or advances in science, engineering, and/or medicine;
  • cover topics that have an impact on society; and
  • have been published, broadcast, or released in 2012, in the United States and in English.

Call For Nominations Now Being Accepted
Nominations will be accepted through February 8, 2013.  For more information about the process, please visit: http://www.keckfutures.org/awards/nominate.html.

NOMINATION FORM
Nominations must be submitted on the online nomination form at http://www.keckfutures.org/awards/nominate.html. Copies of the nominated work must be submitted as described for each category.  Self nominations are permitted. Please submit a nomination in the category that most closely fits the work(s) being nominated.  Supporting materials will not be returned. There is no nomination fee.

BOOK
Books must have been published in the U.S. in 2012 to be considered. Please submit two copies of the book. The publisher and year of publication must be printed on the book. Advance publication dates must include verification from the publisher.

FILM/RADIO/TV
Submissions must have aired on a U.S. station or have been released in U.S. theaters or on DVD in 2012 and may include a single story or movie, a series, or as many as six brief, unrelated stories. Please submit three CDs or DVDs labeled with the nominee’s name(s), the title(s) included on the DVD or CD, and the original airdate (with the name of the U.S. station and the program on which the stories aired) or release date. These must be submitted in protective cases and include authorization allowing the Keck Futures Initiative to reproduce the CD or DVD for review purposes (copyright release). Submission of copies of the program transcript is also encouraged. If you are not able to provide copyright release, please submit an additional 20 copies of the CD or DVD.

MAGAZINE/NEWSPAPER
Work in this category must have been published in the U.S. in 2012, and may comprise a single article or as many as four articles that are unrelated or that constitute a formal series. Please submit three original copies of each article clearly showing the byline and the name and date of the publication and authorization allowing the Keck Futures Initiative to reproduce the article for review purposes (copyright release). If you are not able to provide copyright release, please send an additional 20 copies of the article(s), or a PDF file of the article(s).

ONLINE
Work created specifically for the Web must have been posted online in 2012. Entries may include as many as six online articles, hypertext documents, podcasts, commentaries, etc., or any combination thereof. Preference will be given to nominations that make the best use of the medium, including multi-media presentations that incorporate a combination of videos, blog entries, interactive features, and/or other capabilities unique to this communication medium. Include links to the unique URLs for each work(s). Links, must be active through October 31, 2013.

2013 TIMELINE

  • February 8 – Nomination process closes.
  • Fall 2013 – Winners honored at a ceremony to be held in Washington D.C. Date TBD.

All nominations must be submitted online by February 8, and all supporting materials must be received by February 15, 2013.

For More Information
Visit www.keckfutures.org/awards for a complete listing of this year’s Selection Committee, information about the awards and to nominate.

I wonder if I could self-nominate, despite the fact that I self-identify as a Canadian science blogger; this blog is hosted by a US company. Does that constitute publication in the US? That $20,000 prize is tempting. Good luck to all who enter the competition.

Nanocrystals by design

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A trio of researchers from the University of Chicago are looking for ways to design new atoms or nanocrystals according to the Dec. 5, 2012 news item on ScienceDaily,

Three University of Chicago chemistry professors hope that their separate research trajectories will converge to create a new way of assembling what they call “designer atoms” into materials with a broad array of potentially useful properties and functions.

These “designer atoms” would be nanocrystals — crystalline arrays of atoms intended to be manipulated in ways that go beyond standard uses of atoms in the periodic table. Such arrays would be suited to address challenges in solar energy, quantum computing and functional materials.

The partners in the project are Prof. David Mazziotti, and Associate Professors Greg Engel and Dmitri Talapin. All three have made key advances that are critical for moving the project forward. Now, with $1 million in funding from the W. M. Keck Foundation, they can build on their separate advances in a concerted way toward a new goal.

The Dec. 4, 2012 University of Chicago news release by Stephen Koppes, which originated the news item, provides some excellent descriptions of the science (thank you Stephen), as well as, a description of the work,

Developments in Talapin’s laboratory form the core of the project. A synthetic inorganic chemist, he specializes in creating precisely engineered nanocrystals with well-defined characteristics.

Nanocrystals consist of hundreds or thousands of atoms. This is small enough that new quantum phenomena begin to emerge, but large enough to provide convenient “modules” for the design of new materials. “It’s an interesting combination in that you build materials not from individual atoms, but from the units that resemble atoms in many ways but also behave as a metal, semiconductor or magnet. It’s a bit crazy,” Talapin said.

The potential of the new arrangements may exceed that of existing elements. Chemists cannot tune the properties of hydrogen or helium, for example, but they can tune the properties of nanocrystals.

“You build chemistry from atoms, and quantum mechanics provides principles for doing that,” said Mazziotti, referring to the laws of physics that dominate the world at ultra-small scales. “In the same way, we envision tremendous opportunities in terms of taking nanocrystalline arrays and nanocrystals as the building blocks for new structures where we assemble them into strongly correlated systems.”

…

The essence of strong correlation, of chemical bonds, of chemistry generally, is the connections between particles and how properties of these particles change as they bind to one another, Engel noted. “It’s about new emerging properties coming from strong mixing between the electronic states of particles, the same way two atoms come together to make a molecule,” he said.

Hydrogen and oxygen gases have very different properties. Yet when two hydrogen atoms share electrons with an oxygen atom, they form water. The UChicago trio’s ambition is to extend this framework from the level of individual atoms to the level of small, functional objects, such as metal or magnetic semiconductors.

The key to their project is controlling the degree of correlation between electrons on different nanocrystals. In 2009, Talapin and his collaborators developed a way to control the motions of electrons as they move from one nanocrystal to the next. Their “electronic glue” enables semiconductor nanocrystals to efficiently transfer their electric charges to one another, an important step in the synthesis of new materials.

…

Achieving greater control of correlated electrons—those whose motions are linked to each other—on different nanocrystals is the key to success in the Keck project.

…

Mazziotti and Engel bring theoretical and spectroscopic advances, respectively, to the collaboration. Mazziotti’s advance provides an alternative to traditional approaches to computing strongly correlated electrons in molecules, which scale exponentially with the number of electrons. He has solved a longstanding problem that enables calculations using just two of a molecule’s electrons, which dramatically decreases the computational cost.

His studies of firefly bioluminescence and other phenomena have shown that as molecular systems grow larger, strong correlations between electrons grow more powerful and open new possibilities for emergent behavior. In the context of a semiconducting material such as silicon, emergent behavior is how individual nanoparticles effectively lose their identity, giving rise to collective properties in new materials.

“As the size of a molecular system increases, we see the emergence of new physics behavior and the importance of strong correlation of electrons,” Mazziotti said. “The importance of strong correlation increases dramatically with system size.”

The advance in Engel’s research group was the development of a technique called GRadient-Assisted Photon Echo (GRAPE) spectroscopy, which borrows ideas from magnetic resonance imaging but is used for spectroscopy rather than medical imaging. Engel already has used GRAPE to observe the correlated motion and coupling between chromophores, which are light-absorbing molecules. Now he will apply the technique to nanocrystals.

Over the last 10 days or so, there have been a number of gobsmacking developments, including this one.