Any truck operator knows that hydraulics do the heavy lifting. Water does the work because it’s nearly incompressible at normal scales. But things behave strangely in nanotechnology, the control of materials at the scale of atoms and molecules. Using supercomputers, scientists found a surprising amount of water compression at the nanoscale. These findings could help advance medical diagnostics through creation of nanoscale systems that detect, identify, and sort biomolecules.
“We found that an electric field can compress water locally, and that water compression would prevent molecules from being transported through small pores,” Aksimentiev said. “This is a very counterintuitive effect, because usually it is assumed that a higher electric field would propel molecules faster through the pore. But because the electric field also compresses water, the outcome would be the opposite. That is, the higher electric field would not allow molecules to pass through.” In effect, the water compression generated by the higher electric field pushed DNA molecules away from the nanopore channels.
Aksimentiev and Wilson worked with a one-atom-thick graphene membrane. They poked a hole in it 3.5 nanometers wide, just wide enough to let a strand of DNA through. An external electric field pulled the DNA through the hole, like threading a needle. The nucleotide letters A-C-T-G that make the rungs of the double stranded DNA produce signals as they go through the pore, analogous to playing a tape in a tape recorder. This method being developed, called nanopore sequencing, is an alternative to conventional sequencing. It doesn’t depend on polymerase chain reaction enzymes to amplify DNA and in theory allows for much longer reads.
Image Credit: Article
News This Week
Gold Nanoparticles Act as Tumor-seeking Missiles
A small clinical trial using gold nanoparticles that act as tumor-seeking missiles on a mission to remove prostate cancer has begun at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth). It is [...]
Artificial synapses made from nanowires
Scientists from Jülich together with colleagues from Aachen and Turin have produced a memristive element made from nanowires that functions in much the same way as a biological nerve cell. The component is able [...]
Interactive size control of catalyst nanoparticles
How many nanometers should catalyst nanoparticles be to optimize the course of the reaction? Researchers usually look for the answer through laborious, repetitive tests. At the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy [...]
Nanotechnology, Nanomedicine, and AI: What is Global Health Care Equivalency (GHCE)
What is Global Health Care Equivalency (GHCE)? Looking ahead over the next 10-30 years, with the rapid emergence of, and synergies between, the disciplines of nanotechnology, nanomedicine, and AI, we can envisage a future [...]
Prostate cancer patients could avoid chemotherapy with new blood test
A new development in the testing of one of Australia's biggest cancer killers, prostate cancer, could help avoid unncessary chemotherapy and improve the treatment of patients. Sydney researchers have developed a blood test which [...]
Updated – NanoApps Medical Inc. Near-Term Projects
NanoApps Medical is investigating the possibility that superparamagnetic nanoparticles (SPIONs) (Figure 1) and other classes of nanoparticles (e.g., gold coated nanoshells) (Figure 2) might have the capacity to target cancerous tumors, metastasizing cancer cells, [...]
Nonstop tranport of cargo in nanomachines
Moving around, sensing the extracellular environment, and signaling to other cells are important for a cell to function properly. Responsible for those tasks are cilia, antenna-like structures protruding from most vertebrate cells. Whenever cilia [...]
A major step toward non-viral ocular gene therapy using laser and nanotechnology
In January 2009, the life of engineer Michel Meunier, a professor at Polytechnique Montréal, changed dramatically. Like others, he had observed that the extremely short pulse of a femtosecond laser (0.000000000000001 second) could make [...]
The Implant Files: The hidden human toll of lax controls on the booming medical device industry
Almost 83,000 people have died around the world, including 170 in Australia in the past decade, due to potentially dangerous medical devices, an international investigation into the global device industry has found. In a [...]
Researchers Develop Microscope that Can Image Ten Times Faster
The invisible is made visible by the microscopes. Moreover, in comparison with the traditional light microscopes, transmission X-ray microscopes (TXM) can view through samples with considerably higher resolution, exhibiting extraordinary details. TXM is used [...]
Sydney start-up Inventia develops 3D bio-printer to help speed up cancer research
An Australian innovation in 3D printing could soon help in the fight against cancer. Sydney based start-up Inventia has built a new 3D bio-printer that it says removes the need for time-consuming manual labour [...]
‘Suicide Handshakes’ Kill Precursor T Cells that Pose Autoimmune Dangers
A mechanism tries to stop our T cells from causing autoimmune disorders, and it's like a tight handshake that kills overly aggressive T cells. A person reaches out for a handshake; the other person [...]
Clinical buy-in crucial to digital healthcare success
Note: You may view this video fullscreen! Dzulkefly Ahmad, Malaysia's minister of health, says that even if an organization has a good program and system in place, digitizing healthcare will not succeed if there [...]
Five ways how natural nanotechnology is stimulating human innovation
From CIO Applications: Although nanotechnology is depicted as genuinely recent human development, nature is in reality loaded with nanoscopic designs. They support the fundamental elements of an assortment of living things, from microorganisms to [...]
NASA certifies Falcon 9 for highest priority science missions
NASA has certified SpaceX’s Falcon 9 to launch the agency’s most important science missions, giving the agency new options that could result in lower costs. SpaceX said that the NASA Launch Services Program (LSP) [...]
NASA to support initial studies of privately funded Enceladus mission
NASA signed an agreement in September with a foundation to support initial studies of a privately funded mission to a potentially habitable moon of Saturn. The unfunded Space Act Agreement between NASA and the [...]
Leave A Comment