Thursday, March 17. 2011
Via MIT Technology Review
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Device maps the chemistry of the whole brain in moving animals.
By Katherine Bourzac++
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Wearable PET: A rat’s head fits in the circular opening of this device, which is surrounded by miniaturized detectors and electronics.
Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory |
A tiny wearable scanner has been used to track chemical activity in the brains of unrestrained animals for the first time. By revealing neurological circuitry as the subjects perform normal tasks, researchers say, the technology could greatly broaden the understanding of learning, addiction, depression, and other conditions.
The device was designed to be used with rats—the main animal model used by behavioral neuroscientists. But the researchers who developed the device, at Brookhaven National Laboratory, say it would be straightforward to engineer a similar device for people.
Positron emission tomography, or PET, is already broadly used in neuroscience research and in clinical treatment. It allows researchers to track the location of radioactively labeled neurotransmitters (the chemicals that carry signals between neurons) or drugs within the brain. Images of the way neurotransmitters and drugs move through the brain can reveal the processes that underpin normal behavior such as learning as well as pathologies including addiction. PET has been used to map drug-binding sites in the brains of addicts and healthy people, and to study how those sites change over time and with therapy.
A conventional PET scanner is so large that these studies have to be performed with the subject lying inside a large tube. Large photomultiplier tubes amplify signals from gamma rays emitted by labeled chemicals in the brain. The signals then pass through a desk-sized rack of electronics that process them and map them to a particular region of the brain. To get good readings during animal studies, the subjects are typically anaesthetized or restrained. What's being measured is not normal waking behavior.
"We have very limited data about what brains do in the real world," says Paul Glimcher, professor of neuroscience, economics, and psychology at New York University. Glimcher was not involved with the work.
The new portable scanner is designed to provide the same information about brain chemistry while an animal behaves naturally. It is small and lightweight enough that a rat can carry it around on its head. "[The rat] can move freely, interact with other animals, and at the same time we can make a 3-D map of, for example, dopamine receptors throughout the brain," says David Schlyer, a senior scientist at Brookhaven who led the work.
Schlyer's group worked for years to engineer a miniature PET scanner that could be worn by a moving subject. The device consists of a metal ring hanging from a support structure that helps support its weight and allows the rat to move around. The rat's head goes inside the ring, which contains both detectors and electronics.
The key to miniaturizing the device, Schlyer says, was integrating all the electronics for each detector in the ring on a single, specialized chip. An avalanche photodiode also replaces the large photomultiplier tubes of conventional PET, amplifying the signals emitted by the labeled chemicals in the brain. "The rats take about an hour to acclimate, then begin behaving normally," says Schlyer. The Brookhaven device is described this week in the journal Nature Methods.
The Brookhaven group used the scanner to map the dopamine receptors throughout the entire brains of of moving rats for the first time. Other groups, including Glimcher's, have previously used invasive probes to study dopamine levels in cubic-millimeter-sized portions of the brain in unrestrained animals, but have not been able to look at the entire brain.
Glimcher describes one of several experiments that could be done with the portable device. Researchers know that addicts who have successfully completed rehab are at great risk of relapse if they visit the places they associate with the drug, probably because their brain has been chemically rewired to respond to these associations. Glimcher imagines studies in rats that map brain chemistry when the animals are allowed to decide whether or not to take a drug, and when they wander into a location they have learned to associate with the drug.
"We don't really understand that well how circuits in [different parts of the brain] interact in addiction," says Glimcher. "To even get to a place where I can give you a clinical hypothesis, we have got to get more basic information. This is the breakthrough that could make that possible."
PET is not as broadly used in studies involving people as other neuroimaging methods because of the small but significant exposure to radiation that's necessary. Still, the Brookhaven researchers say it would be possible to make a wearable PET scanner that fits inside something resembling a football helmet. Joseph Huston, chair of the Center for Behavioral Neurosciences at the University of Düsseldorf, says the Brookhaven group has done "an incredible service" to the neuroscience community in developing the device. "The rat is the most important model for the brain—everything basic [we know] about learning, feeding, fear, sex, is based on work in the rat."
Schlyer says his group has talked with a few companies about licensing a commercial version of the device. But for now, they are mainly planning further behavioral studies in their lab. Mapping dopamine in waking animals could provide insights into a wide range of normal and pathological conditions such as the movement problems associated with Parkinson's disease. But dopamine is just one of the many brain chemicals the group can map. Schlyer says they will also study the sexual behavior of rats.
The group is also working on another instrument that combines PET with magnetic resonance imaging to provide richer information about tissue structure and function. They will start a clinical trial of this device in breast cancer patients next month.
Copyright Technology Review 2011.
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You can also read on the same subject: An On-Off Switch for Anxiety (MIT Tech Review as well)
Personal comment:
I blog this article from the MIT because I more and more believe that researches in neuroscience will have a huge incidence in the future on how we understand the way humans (and animals) and possibly artificial intelligences interact with each other, with their environment, with situations, etc. and how these behaviours can trigger specific patterns in the brain (neural, chemical, electric activities and hormones secretions, etc.) and/or in the body, which in return certainly condition what we "feel" about this situation. This would also mean that a "feeling" is somehow also very material (brain pattern, hormones, etc.)
So to say, I believe that spatial conditions in architecture or environments triggers certain brain conditions that could be in fact the direct "way" we experience this environment (comfortable, agressive, "nice", "ugly", hot, cold, ...).
One step further and we could possibly sometimes replace the space itself (or its experience) by it's brain pattern (drugs?) triggering the same feeling.
For my part, I will keep an eye full of curiosity on the results of researches in neurosciences ...
Wednesday, January 05. 2011
Via MIT Technology Review
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Software-designed microbes could make biofuels and drugs.
By Katherine Bourzac
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Bio coder: Christopher Voigt, an assistant professor at the University of California, San Francisco, is developing software to speed up designing microbes that produce biofuels and other useful chemicals.
Credit: Technology Review
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Genetically modified microbes can biofuels, drugs, and other products efficiently and doing arduous work such as cleaning up toxic waste. But designing the complex biochemical pathways that modified microbes need to perform such tasks is like building a Rube Goldberg machine. Getting the genetic designs right is a time-consuming process of trial and error.
Christopher Voigt, an associate professor at the University of California, San Francisco, hopes to change that with software that automates the creation of "genetic circuits" in microbes. These circuits are the pathways of genes, proteins, and other biomolecules that the cells use to perform a particular task, such as breaking down sugar and turning it into fuel. Voigt and colleagues have so far made basic circuit components in E. coli. They are working with the large California biotechnology company Life Technologies to develop software that would let bioengineers design complete genetic circuits more easily.
Designing a microbe for a particular task would then be much like writing a new computer program, says Voigt. Just as programmers do not have to think about how electrons move through the gates in an integrated circuit, he says, biological engineers may eventually be able to design circuits for genes, proteins, and other biomolecules at a level of abstraction. "If we apply computational processes to things that bacteria can already do, we can get complete control over making spider silk, or drugs, or other chemicals," he says.
Certain types of circuits could, for instance, help regulate the activity of bacteria that produce biofuels. Instead of outside controls, internal circuits could maintain the chemical levels and other conditions needed to keep bacteria producing at high yields. "We're trying to make the cell understand where it is and what it should be doing based on its understanding of the world," says Voigt. Trying to design such a control circuit without the help of a computer would take a lot of trial and error.
Voigt has now made a type of circuit component called a NOR gate in E. coli bacteria. NOR gates can be combined to perform any logical operation. In work described in the journal Nature, Voigt's group also showed they could improve the quality of the output of bacterial circuits by having them work collectively, forming a circuit of NOR gates, one in each cell. Voigt has designed bacterial circuits to hook into natural bacterial communication systems called quorum sensing, so that the cells can "vote" on an output. This increases the quality of the computation peformed.
"This breakthrough work in synthetic biology expands our capacity to construct functional, programmable bacteria," says James Collins, professor of biomedical engineering at Boston University who is not affiliated with Voigt's team. Collins observes that the California researchers have learned to combine simple circuits in individual cells to make a more complex circuit at the population level. "This represents an important step towards harnessing the power of synthetic ecosystems for biotech applications," he says.
The University of California researchers are now entering the second year of a research agreement with Life Technologies to develop software to automate the biological design process. "The vision is to take these software modules and develop them so that the process of biological parts selection and circuit design is far more automated and simplified than it is today," says Todd Peterson, vice president of synthetic biology research and development at the company. The company hopes to incorporate most of the software modules being designed by Voigt's group into its Vector NTI software by the end of spring 2012.
Copyright Technology Review 2011.
Personal comment:
That move was expected and is now coming (soon to a software near you?): when code meets biology that meets design.
Thursday, November 18. 2010
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Researchers at the University of Newcastle in the UK have created a new kind of concrete glue that can patch up the cracks in concrete structures, restoring buildings that have been damaged by seismic events or deteriorated over time. But the glue isn't an adhesive or some kind of synthetic material; the researchers have custom-designed a bacteria to burrow deep into the cracks in concrete where they produce a mix of calcium carbonate and a special bacteria glue that hardens to the same strength of the surrounding concreate. - PopSci
Personal comment:
This would certainly not have pleased our dear Mr Le Corbusier. His healthy sunny buildings being saved by bacteria (like a psychoanalytic return of the repressed)! But it will certainly please all owners of such old cracking buildings!
Monday, November 15. 2010
Via BLDGBLOG
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by noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Manaugh)
[Image: Gold nanoparticles, courtesy of Georgia Tech].
It was reported earlier this month that " gold nanoparticles can induce luminescence in leaves." That's right: glowing trees. The scientists who discovered it call it bio-LED.
According to ElectroIQ, "by implanting the gold nanoparticles into Bacopa caroliniana plants, Dr. Yen-Hsun Su [of the Research Center for Applied Science in Taiwan] was able to induce the chlorophyll in the leaves to produce a red emission. Under high wavelength of ultraviolet, the gold nanoparticles can produce a blue-violet fluorescence to trigger a red emission of the surrounding chlorophyll."
This has the exquisitely surreal effect of being able "to make roadside trees luminescent at night"—with the important caveat "that the technologies and bioluminescence efficiency need to be improved for the trees to replace street lights in the future." In other words, we're not quite there—but a deciduous splendor might illuminate streets near you, soon.
[Image: Gold nanoparticles, courtesy of Georgia Tech].
Last spring, I should point out, I had the pleasure of teaching a research seminar at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, looking at blackouts: that is, landscapes—both urban and otherwise—encountered in a state of unexpected darkness.
We looked at a huge variety of technologies for non-electrical illumination—sources of light for situations in which electricity has failed—from tools as basic as pocket lighters to openly whimsical investigations into bioluminescent fish, plants, algae, and bacteria, scaled up to intimations of an entire bioluminescent metropolis.
But the idea that trees impregnated with gold might someday line city streets, turning night into day, is like a vision of Gustav Klimt unexpectedly crossed with Con Edison: a botanical alchemy through which base wood becomes light at the speed of photosynthesis.
Tuesday, October 05. 2010
Via TreeHugger
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photo: Luis Argerich/Creative Commons
Some new research in Bioscience outlines different ways in which genetically modifying trees and plants to help them increase their carbon sequestration potential to fight climate change--we're talking billions of tons of carbon a year here--immediately raises the question of support for them. If GM trees could really help stop climate change, would that make you any more likely to support them?
The paper Photosequestration: Carbon Biosequestration by Plants and Prospects of Genetic Engineering [PDF], goes through a number of ways in which trees and plants act as carbon sinks (through biomass, in soil, biochar, use in wood products, bioenergy crops) and examines ways in which genetic modification could boost this: Enhancing photosynthesis, increasing the carbon allocation to roots, improving tolerance to environmental stresses such as salinization and drought conditions, and improving biomass quality in bioenergy crops.
It's all interesting from a technological point of view and I encourage those interested to dig into the original report for more info. But what's the theoretical payoff of using GM technology along these lines?
The report authors show that maximizing photosynthesis could lead to a 50% increase in productivity, calculating that on land currently under cultivation this could boost carbon storage by 2-3 gigatons annually. GM tweaking of other aspects of carbon storage could produce an additional 6-8 gigatons of storage.
Now that's by no means an insignificant amount of increase, but it's also less than one-third of total carbon emissions caused by human activity. And the researchers specifically note that this is just one of many policy and technological tools available to increase carbon sequestration in natural vegetation and crops (AIBS BioScience).
Considering that, would you back using GM plants in this manner? Obviously some of the same issues that dog other GM crops would still be in play: Health issues, cross contamination with non-GM plants, and (the bigger issue to me) continued consolidation of corporate control over essential elements of life. What do TreeHugger readers think?
Tuesday, August 31. 2010
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Venter Institute researchers have made the first viable cell with a synthetic genome.
By Katherine Bourzac
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A solution of cells, some of which contain the new genome, is mixed with a gel-based culture medium that contains an antibiotic. Then it's poured into petri dishes and put into an incubator. Only cells containing the synthetic genome carry a gene that protects them from the antibiotic. The blue spots are colonies of bacteria now controlled by the transplanted synthetic genome.
Credit: Ryan Donnell |
Multimedia
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With a precise motion, Li Ma, a technician at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, MD, pipettes a cherry-red solution of bacterial cells into a vial that contains a clear solution of fragile DNA loops. These loops, the largest pieces of DNA ever assembled in the lab, are each capable of controlling all the ordinary functions of a cell. But the DNA didn't originate in any bacteria: instead, scientists pieced it together from bottled chemicals. The process they recently developed for doing this is the first to yield synthetic cells that are capable of surviving. Some of the bacterial cells that Ma is working with will fuse together in the solution, engulfing the synthetic genome and then replicating and living under its control.
Conventional genetic engineering is a lengthy process in which genes are altered one by one, often over successive generations of organisms. That makes radically changing a genome a daunting proposition. But the newly developed techniques allow researchers to edit genomes on a computer, subtracting or adding genes by literally cutting and pasting them in a file. It's more like word processing than the traditional lab work involved in culturing and screening generations of organisms. The researchers can then perform the genetic equivalent of printing out the file, at which point they're able to transplant the result--a new genome--into existing cells. These steps dramatically speed up the engineering process; it might take just weeks to complete experiments that previously would have taken months or years.
Ultimately, researchers want to use synthetic biology to design microbes that very efficiently produce vaccines, clean fuels, and other products. But they can't engineer new genomes from scratch, because they don't yet know enough about what genes and networks of genes are needed to sustain life and produce a desired product. "You might remove one gene and the cell lives; remove a second and it dies; then remove a third and it lives again," says Daniel Gibson, an associate professor at the institute. Thus, the Venter researchers are experimenting with the sequence of a naturally occurring genome. They hope to learn more about how genomes and cells work by rapidly deleting and adding genes in different combinations, incorporating the new genomes into cells, and then observing how those genomes function or fail to function.
Genetic Revision
The process starts on the computer, where Gibson pulls up the genome of the bacterium Mycoplasma mycoides. It's a relatively simple one, comprising just 1,078,809 DNA base pairs that make up about 900 genes. (In comparison, E. coli bacteria have about 4,400 genes.) Gibson and his colleagues have made a few changes: they've deleted 14 genes from the sequence and added others. To create a watermark distinguishing their creation, they developed a code that converts English into the four-letter alphabet of DNA and used it to modify the genome, incorporating their names, a URL, a few sentences, and an e-mail address into the genome.
Gibson's group then uses software to divide the modified genome into 1,100 sections, each about 1,080 base pairs long--a size that can be made economically with a DNA synthesizer, a machine that pieces together stretches of DNA from individual base pairs supplied in bottled solutions. Finally, the researchers enlist yeast cells to stitch these long sections together, a job that machines can't do.
Gibson kneels in front of a refrigerator in the lab and pulls out 12 plastic boxes, each of which contains 96 wells full of DNA fragments based on the computer-modified designs. He stacks them on a bench and says, "This is the entire genome in 1,100 pieces." Gibson uses a pipette to gather 10 fragments in order and adds them to a tiny plastic tube, along with an additional fragment of DNA that will help pull the sequence together into a loop. Next he adds yeast cells that have been treated to allow them to take up the DNA pieces. "Each yeast cell thinks these pieces of DNA are part of its own chromosome, and it's broken," he says. "It wants to put them back together." The researchers designed the DNA fragments so that the ones to be linked together have ends with matching sequences. The yeast pieces the 10 fragments together by matching these sequences to produce DNA loops that are each 10,000 base pairs long. Repeating the process links the 10,000-base-pair sequences to form 100,000-base-pair segments of the genome. After a third pooling step, the yeast have stitched together the entire synthetic genome. Using established methods, the synthetic genomes are extracted from the yeast.
Handling the extracted DNA takes considerable care: even a small genome is a gigantic, fragile molecule. "It's going to break into 100 pieces if you just look at it wrong," Gibson says. If it were suspended in a liquid solution, the DNA could be destroyed merely by the movement of the liquid. So Gibson immobilizes the genomes in agarose, an algae-derived gel commonly used as a medium for microbes. Enclosed in this protective pellet, they can safely be stored until the researchers are ready to transplant them into recipient cells.
Tiny Transplant
In a lab down the hall, Ma has prepared the cells that will receive the new sequence: a species of bacteria called Mycoplasma capricolum that's closely related to the species from which the synthetic genome is derived. While an enzyme that degrades agarose liquefies DNA-containing pellets in one test tube, Ma gets another test tube and mixes the bacteria with calcium chloride and polyethylene glycol, a cocktail that the researchers believe makes the cells' surfaces malleable and sticky. Now it's a matter of chance and a steady hand. Ma pipettes some of the cell mixture into the vial containing the synthetic genome loops. The sticky cells begin fusing with one another. To maintain their spherical shape after fusion, they must take in volume from the solution around them. As this happens, some cells--about one in 100,000--also take in the synthetic genome. The result is a sort of supercell with three genomes--the synthetic genome and one from each of the two cells. The supercell then divides into three smaller cells, one of which contains the synthetic genome.
Ma smears the cell solution on culture plates containing an antibiotic to which only cells with the synthetic genome are resistant (during the genome editing process, the researchers added a gene that makes them impervious to it). Those cells will live, growing and dividing under the control of the new genome. The rest die off, leaving behind a pure colony of synthetic cells.
The next step for the Venter Institute researchers is to use their genomic editing, synthesizing, and transplanting techniques to design and test genomes with fewer and fewer genes. The goal is to create a "minimal" cell--one with only the genes it needs to survive. Such a cell could be easier than a natural one to alter through genetic engineering.
The researchers' methods are currently very expensive: it costs $300,000 to $500,000 to make and transplant a synthetic genome if the researchers synthesize the DNA in house, or about three times that much if they purchase it from an outside supplier. Yet the price of DNA synthesis is falling and may continue to decline even further as demand increases and technology improves. If that happens and the genome-building techniques prove as useful as the Venter researchers hope they will, more people will begin to adopt their methods, says James Collins, a professor of biomedical engineering at Boston University.
"This is a significant advance for synthetic biology," Collins says. "Now we've got to see, what are the changes that can be introduced to the genome?"
Copyright Technology Review 2010.
Thursday, August 12. 2010
Via TFTS -----
I don’t know whether to be horrified or amazed, folks–seems that the crew out at the University of Calgary has managed to create a kind of biological microchip comprised of silicon…and human brain cells.
What this immediately will allow for is a better study of how brain cells work together, thus allowing for research
at the cellular level on brain diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. There’s some word that says this will allow, eventually, for a host of other technologies to come about, including prosthetic limbs that behave like real limbs as they’re hooked directly into a brain interface, and possibly even implantable computer technology, thus allowing you to take your laptop literally anywhere you go and access the internet most any place you happen to be within range of Wi-Fi.
There’s a lot of possibility here, no mistake, but there’s just as much possibility for misuse here (Mind control implants, anyone? And why not? If they can make a computer that interfaces directly with your brain then surely they can make the computer that takes control of your body and controls it remotely.) so this is one development that leaves me with grave concerns.
Friday, May 21. 2010
Via GOOD (is it, really?)
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Good/terrifying news! J. Craig Venter, the maverick geneticist, has created a new synthetic life form. Using an existing bacteria genome as a model, Venter's team created a new 1.08-million base pair genome and transplanted it into a natual cell, where it took over and started replicating.
As Venter described it during a press conference this morning, “This is the first self-replicating species we’ve had on the planet whose parent is a computer.” Popular Science says this "opens the door to engineered biology that is completely manipulated by laboratory scientists." Venter wants to use synthetic life to create algae that can eat carbon dioxide and produce fuel, but potential applications include creating new foods, speeding up the production of vaccines, and of course, taking over the world with an army of engineered superorganisms.
The number of people writing about this online will far exceed the number who know what they're talking about. If you want informed opinions, this PDF provides a roundup of reactions from eight actual experts.
Friday, May 14. 2010
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Machines made of DNA could one day assemble complex--and tiny--electrical and mechanical devices.
By Prachi Patel
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DNA assembly line: An atomic force microscope image shows gold nanoparticles on a DNA track.
Credit: Courtesy of Ned Seeman |
Its precise structure and ability to bind with other molecules makes DNA an attractive scaffolding material for nanotech researchers. Scientists have already used DNA to construct two-dimensional patterns, three-dimensional objects, and simple shape-changing devices. Now two teams of researchers have separately made complex programmable machines using DNA molecules.
Researchers from Columbia University, Arizona State University, and Caltech have made a device that follows a programmable path on a surface patterned with DNA. Meanwhile, researchers from New York University, led by DNA nanoarchitecture pioneer Ned Seeman, have combined multiple DNA devices to make an assembly line. The nano contraption picks up gold nanoparticles as it tumbles along a DNA-patterned surface.
The two machines, described in today's Nature journal, are a possible step forward in making DNA nanobots that could assemble tiny electrical and mechanical devices. DNA robots could also put together molecules in new ways to make new materials, says Lloyd Smith, a chemistry professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "Robots might have the ability to position one molecule in a particular way so that a reaction happens with another molecule which might not happen if they randomly collide in solution," he says.
In the past, researchers have made simple machines such as tweezers and walkers that have also been fashioned from DNA. Tweezers open and close by adding specific DNA strands to the solution. Walkers are molecules with dangling strands, or legs, that bind and detach from other DNA strands patterned on a surface, in effect moving along the surface.
The nano walker made at Columbia University is a protein molecule decorated with three legs--single-stranded DNAzymes, synthetic DNA molecules that act as enzymes and catalyze a reaction. The legs bind to complementary DNA strands on a surface. Then they catalyze a reaction that shortens one of the surface strands, so that its attachment to the leg becomes weaker. That leg lets go and moves on to the next surface strand.
The walker follows a track of strands that the researchers pattern on the surface. It can take up to 50 steps--compared to the two or three steps taken by previous walkers. It stops when it encounters a sequence that cannot be shortened. "We show how to program [the walker's] behavior by programming the landscape," says Milan Stojanovic, a biomedical engineer at Columbia University who developed the walker. "It enables us to think about adding further complexity: more than one molecule interacting and more complicated commands on the surface. What we hope to do eventually is to be able to [use nanobots to] repair tissues."
Seeman and his colleagues at New York University combine three different DNA components to make an assembly line. They have DNA path, a walker, and a machine that can deliver or hold back a cargo of a molecule of gold. The machine is a DNA structure that can be set up to either put a gold nanoparticle-laden strand in the path of the walker or away from it. The walker has four legs and three single-stranded DNA hands that can bind to the gold.
The researchers demonstrated a system in which the walker passes three machines, each carrying a different type of gold particle. Each machine can be set up to either deliver its cargo or keep it, giving a total of eight different ways in which the walker can be loaded, leading to eight different products.
The advances represent continuing success in creating nano devices with increasingly complex functions. "[We're] moving from individual entities that do something interesting to systems of entities working on something with a more complex behavior and function," Smith says.
Copyright Technology Review 2010.
Via Bustler
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An American architecture professor, Ginger Krieg Dosier, 32, Assistant Professor of Architecture at American University of Sharjah (AUS) in Abu Dhabi, has won this year’s prestigious Metropolis Next Generation Design Prize for “Biomanufactured Brick.” The 2010 Next Generation Prize Challenge was “ONE DESIGN FIX FOR THE FUTURE” - a small fix to change the world. The Next Generation judges decided that Professor Dosier’s well-documented and -tested plan to replace clay-fired brick with a brick made with bacteria and sand, met the challenge perfectly.
“The ordinary brick - you would think that there is nothing more basic than baking a block of clay in an oven,” said Horace Havemeyer, Publisher of Metropolis. “Ginger Dosier’s idea is the perfect example of how making a change in an almost unexamined part of our daily lives can have an enormous impact on the environment.”
1-2-3 brick-making with Dosier’s competition-winning concept: pour the bacteria solution together with the cementing solution over the sand inside the formwork, let it saturate and harden (currently about one week) - voilà: we have an ecobrick!
There are over 1.3 trillion bricks manufactured each year worldwide, and over 10% are made by hand in coal-fired ovens. On average, the baking process emits 1.4 pounds of carbon per brick - more than the world’s entire aviation fleet. In countries like India and China, outdated coal-fired brick kilns consume more energy, emit more carbon, and produce great quantities of particulate air pollution. Dosier’s process replaces baking with simple mixing, and because it is low-tech (apart from the production of the bacterial activate), can be done onsite in localities without modern infrastructure. The process uses no heat at all:mixing sand and non-pathogenic bacteria (sporosar) and putting the mixture into molds. The bacteria induce calcite precipitation in the sand and yield bricks with sandstone-like properties. If biomanufactured bricks replaced each new brick on the planet, it would save nearly 800 million tons of CO2 annually.
One of Dosier’s many ecobrick experiments in the lab
Professor Dosier, was trained as an architect (at Auburn University, Rural Studio, and Cranbrook Academy) and teaches architecture. But she studied microbiology, geology, and materials science in her spare time, most recently when she was teaching architecture at North Carolina State University. The results - which have been tested with Lego-sized bricks in research at AUS - impress architects and geologists alike. Grant Ferris, professor of geology at the University of Toronto, says that in all the scientific studies of microbial mineral precipitation, there has been little or no work on the “fabrication of construction or design materials,” which is what makes the Next Generation winner’s work “so compelling.”
Bacteria is dunked in a broth of growth media. The solution then incubates in test tubes at 37˚C before it’s fed into sand-filled formwork via drip.
“There was a strong feeling among the judges that the award should go to someone dealing with an issue on a global scale,” says Next Generation juror Chris Sharples, of SHoP Architects. “Here was a very simple concept defined by scientific method and an example of how you can come up with some very innovative ways to solve basic problems.”
“Ginger Dosier’s achievement is a tribute not only to her own imagination and grit, but serves as an example of how designers can make an outsize contribution to creating a more sustainable world,” said Susan Szenasy, editor-in-chief of Metropolis. “We challenged the design community to produce a “small (but brilliant and elegant) ‘fix’” for the designed environment. We were surprised that an object with no moving parts - the brick - could be redesigned in so profound a way. But there were many entries that fully met the challenge of producing One Design Fix - and they show that the design community as a whole is overflowing with the imagination, knowledge, intuition, and skills to produce not just one but hundreds of fixes that can affect our planet today and for centuries to come.”
Digital bricks: Dosier will soon be able to print bricks of all shapes and sizes on rapid-prototyping machines.
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