Printing With Enzymes

Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers at Duke University have developed a new printing technique using catalysts to create microdevices such as labs-on-a-chip. Their inkless printing technique uses enzymes from E. coli bacteria and has an accuracy of less than 2 nanometers. While they're are now using enzymes to stamp nanopatterns without ink, the research team is already working with non-enzymatic catalysts. And it added that 'future versions of the inkless technique could be used to build complex nanoscale devices with unprecedented precision.'"

Something smells fishy

[pesho]

Yet another scientific story with big claims and little detail. 2nM accuracy sounds a little overstated. First the polyacrylamide gel is elastic. Second they are using fluorescence to see the pattern and this at the very best has resolution of about 300nM. Third they need to generate the pattern on the stamp first and there is no mention in the article what is the accuracy of that. They seem to assume that the accuracy is equal to the DNA diameter.

Osama Bin Lexmark

[packetmon]

Now all we need is for a printer company to get it wrong, and paper to be thrown into our reservoirs... (Water and the Bad E.Coli [montana.edu])

• "This isn't something you could do on a whim," Camper said. "The risk is low, but it's there." ... What would happen if a pathogen like the bad E. coli-known as the hamburger E. coli for the deaths it caused several years ago at a Jack-in-the-Box restaurant-got into a water system and "interacted" with slime called biofilm? ... To put it a different way, what if colonies of harmless bacteria (called biofilms) that often dwell in water systems, like the bacteria that harmlessly inhabit the human gut, were to trap pathogens and shield them from disinfectants? Could the biofilms become reservoirs for disease? The question isn't a theoretical one. Last year an Ontario city had the bad E. coli (E. coli 0157:H7) in its municipal water system. The military is interested "big time" in what the Montana scientists are trying to develop, said Camper, which is why the MSU Center for Biofilm Engineering has applied for additional funds from the defense organization called DARPA.

Re:Osama Bin Lexmark

[wizardforce]

and this is why you don't put just one safegaurd... you put several in at once- they're going to have to be very creative in their adapting to break this one. then again in the case of these printers, the bacteria at no time actually get near them so it's a non-issue. besides, we already use bacteria to produces enzymes, polypeptides and the like- ask anyone who needs insulin now that we use bacteria to produce it instead of harvesting insulin from the dead. those new color-safe "bleaches" use enzymes derived from hyperthermophile bacteria too, your local water treatment plant also uses *tons* of bacteria to digest organic material. bacteria are EVERYWHERE and encountered on a daily basis so the fear factor here is due precisely to people not paying any attention to simple biology until someone starts the fear-mongering.