NanoComputer

Prof. Roy Bar-Ziv and his research team in the Weizmann Institute’s Materials and Interfaces Department – Israel – recently have created a two-dimensional, cell-like system on a glass chip. This system, composed of some of the basic biological molecules found in cells – DNA, RNA, proteins – carried out one of the central functions of a living cell: gene expression, the process by which the information stored in the genes is translated into proteins. More than that, it enabled the scientists, led by research student Yael Heprotein yman, to obtain “snapshots” of this process in nanoscale resolution. The system, consisting of glass chips that are only 8 nanometers thick, is based on an earlier one designed in Bar-Ziv’s lab by Dr. Shirley Daube and former student Dr. Amnon Buxboim. After being coated in a light-sensitive substance, the chips are irradiated with focused beams of ultraviolet light, which enables the biological molecules to bind to the substance in the irradiated areas. In this way, the scientists could precisely place DNA molecules encoding a protein marked with a green fluorescent marker in one area of the chip and antibodies that “trap” the colored proteins in an abutting area.

Protein interaction on a chip: Red proteins concentrated more on the right, farther from the chip-bound genes, while green proteins are more highly concentrated on the left, closer to the genes that encode them

Source: http://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/

The body’s immune system exists to identify and destroy foreign objects, whether they are bacteria, viruses, flecks of dirt or splinters. Unfortunately, nanoparticles designed to deliver drugs, and implanted devices like pacemakers or artificial joints, are just as foreign and subject to the same response. Now, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science and Penn’s Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics have figured out a way to provide a “passport” for such therapeutic devices, enabling them to get past the body’s security system.

“From your body’s perspective,” said the student Rodriguez, member of the research team led by professor Dennis Discher, “an arrowhead a thousand years ago and a pacemaker today are treated the same — as a foreign invader. “We’d really like things like pacemakers, sutures and drug-delivery vehicles to not cause an inflammatory response from the innate immune system.”

Source: http://www.upenn.edu/

How to be more precise and less invasive when treating cancer tumors? A team led by researchers from the UCLA -University of California Los Angeles- Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science has developed a degradable nanoscale shell to carry proteins to cancer cells and stunt the growth of tumors without damaging healthy cells. Yi Tang, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and a member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA, reports developing tiny shells composed of a water-soluble polymer that safely deliver a protein complex to the nucleus of cancer cells to induce their death. The shells, which at about 100 nanometers are roughly half the size of the smallest bacterium, degrade harmlessly in non-cancerous cells.

“Delivering a large protein complex such as apoptin to the innermost compartment of tumor cells was a challenge, but the reversible polymer encapsulation strategy was very effective in protecting and escorting the cargo in its functional form,” said Muxun Zhao, lead author of the research and a graduate student in chemical and biomolecular engineering at UCLA.
Source: http://newsroom.ucla.edu/

A research team from the City University of New York -CUNY-, has developped a method to detect a single virus particle, which is in the size range of a nanoparticle. (About 80,000 nanoparticles side by side would have the same width as a human hair). Their work has made it possible, for the first time, to detect the smallest virus particle. Since even one viral particle can represent a deadly threat, the research likely will make an important contribution to ongoing research on early detection of such diseases as AIDS and cancer. The team’s breakthrough involved adding a nano-antenna to the light-sensing device to enhance the signal.

“The idea that light can ‘sense’ the presence of nanoparticles and respond to their arrival was groundbreaking,” Dr. Kolchenko from CUNY says. “Since all the deadliest viruses and most interesting biological molecules – proteins and DNA — belong to the nano world, our research proved truly innovative, and its promise is almost unlimited in terms of detecting pretty much everything of interest in life sciences,” he adds.
Let’ds remind that a Norwegian team has found one month ago a way to measure individual particle in the blood. SEE former article : http://www.nanocomputer.com/?p=4393
Source: http://www1.cuny.edu/

Researchers at Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly) have created an ultra-sensitive biosensor capable of identifying the smallest single virus particles in solution, an advance that may revolutionize early disease detection in a point-of-care setting and shrink test result wait times from weeks to minutes. Stephen Arnold, university professor of applied physics and member of the Othmer-Jacobs Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and researchers of NYU-Poly‘s MicroParticle PhotoPhysics Laboratory for BioPhotonics (MP3L) reported their findings in the most recent issue of Applied Physics Letters, published by the American Institute of Physics.

“When the body encounters a foreign agent, it responds by producing massive quantities of antibody proteins, which outnumber the virus. If we can identify and detect these single proteins, we can diagnose the presence of a virus far earlier, speeding treatment,” Arnold said. “This also opens up a new realm of possibilities in proteomics,” he said, referring to the study of proteins. “All cancers generate markers, and if we have a test that can detect a single marker at the protein level, it doesn’t get more sensitive than that.”
Source: http://www.poly.edu/press-release/2012/08/28/nyu-poly-researchers-set-record-detecting-smallest-virus-opening-new-possib

University of Illinois chemists found that DNA can shape gold nanoparticle growth similarly to the way it shapes protein synthesis, with different letters of the genetic code producing gold circles, stars and hexagons. DNA holds the genetic code for all sorts of biological molecules and traits. But University of Illinois researchers have found that DNA’s code can similarly shape metallic structures. DNA segments can direct the shape of gold nanoparticles – tiny gold crystals that have many applications in medicine, electronics and catalysis. Led by Yi Lu, the Schenck Professor of Chemistry at the U. of I., the team published its surprising findings in the journal Angewandte Chemie.

“DNA-encoded nanoparticle synthesis can provide us a facile but novel way to produce nanoparticles with predictable shape and properties,” Lu said. “Such a discovery has potential impacts in bio-nanotechnology and applications in our everyday lives such as catalysis, sensing, imaging and medicine.”

Source: http://news.illinois.edu/news/12/0808nanoparticles_YiLu.html

Enabling bioengineers to design new molecular machines for nanotechnology applications is one of the possible outcomes of a study by University of Montreal researchers that was published in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology today.  The scientists have developed a new approach to visualize how proteins assemble, which may also significantly aid our understanding of diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, which are caused by errors in assembly.

Alzheimer's and Parkinson's,are caused by errors in assembly. Here shown are two different assembly stages (purple and red) of the protein ubiquitin and the fluorescent probe used to visualize these stage (tryptophan: see yellow). 


“In order to survive, all creatures, from bacteria to humans, monitor and transform their environments using small protein nanomachines made of thousands of atoms,” explained the senior author of the study, Prof. Stephen Michnick of the university's department of biochemistry. “For example, in our sinuses, there are complex receptor proteins that are activated in the presence of different odor molecules. Some of those scents warn us of danger; others tell us that food is nearby.” Proteins are made of long linear chains of amino acids, which have evolved over millions of years to self-assemble extremely rapidly – often within thousandths of a split second – into a working nanomachine. “One of the main challenges for biochemists is to understand how these linear chains assemble into their correct structure given an astronomically large number of other possible forms,” Michnick said.

Source: http://www.nouvelles.umontreal.ca/udem-news/news/20120611-researchers-watch-tiny-living-machines-self-assemble.html

A Spanish and French research team have described a new technique for measuring the temperature inside a single cell without altering the cell’s metabolism. 

The new technique uses transfected green fluorescent protein (GFP) as a temperature nanoprobe and measures the polarization anisotropy of the GFP fluorescence. This rapid and non-invasive thermal nanoscopy differs from previous intents in that it does not alter cellular processes with the introduction of synthetic nano-objects. Furthermore, it is fully compatible with widespread GFP cellular biology.This advance complements the optical toolbox for biologists and could help to provide new understanding of cellular processes, such as those involved in Cancer.

The research is published in NanoLetters, by Jon Donner, Sebastian Thompson and Mark Kreuzer in the group led by ICREA Professor at ICFO, Romain Quidant, in collaboration with Guillaume Baffou, ex-ICFOnian now at Institut Fresnel in Marseille, France, 

Source: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nl300389y

Researchers at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital have shown a new category of "green" nanoparticles comprised of a non-toxic, protein-based nanotechnology that can non-invasively cross the blood brain barrier and is capable of transporting various types of drugs.In an article published May 1, 2012 online in PLoS ONE, Gordana Vitaliano, MD, director of the Brain Imaging NaNoTechnology Group at the McLean Hospital Imaging Center, reported that clathrin protein, a ubiquitous protein found in human, animal, plant, bacteria and fungi cells, can been modified for use as a nanoparticle for in-vivo studies.

"This study provides a new insight into utilizing bioengineered clathrin protein as a novel nanoplatform that passes the blood brain barrier," said Vitaliano, who successfully attached different fluorescent labels, commonly used in imaging, to functionalize clathrin nanoparticles. "We were able to show that the clathrin nanoparticles could be non-invasively delivered to the central nervous system (CNS) in animals. The clathrin performed significantly."

Source: http://www.mclean.harvard.edu/news/press/current.php?kw=mclean-hospital
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A protein that plays a major role in tumour spread at nanoscale could pave the way to new cancer treatments, research suggests. In laboratory tests, scientists showed that blocking the protein, periostin, prevented the formation of secondary cancers. Rather than focusing on cancer cells themselves, the researchers looked at the environment around tumours.They found several conditions necessary for "metastatic" – or spreading – cancer to propagate.

"In particular, we were able to isolate a protein, periostin, in the niches where metastases develop," said study leader Dr Joerg Huelsken, from the Swiss Centre for Experimental Cancer Research in Lausanne. "Without this protein, the cancer stem cell cannot initiate metastasis; instead, it disappears or remains dormant."

Source: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature10694.html