Tiny Motors Controlled Inside Human Cells 46
cold fjord tips a BBC report about the successful installation of microscopic motors into living, human cells. The motors were propelled inside the cell by pulses of ultrasound and steered with magnetism. "At low ultrasonic power, the nanomotors had little effect on these cells. But when the power was increased, the nanomotors surged into action, zooming around and bumping into organelles — structures within the cell that perform specific functions. The nanomotors could be used as 'egg beaters' to essentially homogenise the cell's contents, or act as battering rams to puncture the cell membrane." Once finer control is gained over the motors, they could be used to for extremely small scale surgery, or to deliver drugs to very precise locations. Professor Tom Mallouk of Penn State said multiple motors can move independently of one another, which is important if we try to use them as a cancer treatment. "You don't want a whole mass of them going in one direction."
Re: (Score:3)
This experiment was done on a HeLa cell [wikipedia.org] that ingested the device. There's no word on how they would introduce this to a normal, healthy cell that was still part of a larger organism, nor of how long it would take to ingest it, nor of have they control it using the ultrasonic and magnetic forces.
My guess, however, is that anyone targeted by terrorists intending to employ this attack would be more likely to die of old age first.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh goody (Score:1)
Motors? (Score:2)
How are they motors? the derive all of their motive power from energy outside the cell ( ultrasonics and magenetic field). There are more like selective energy receivers.
Oh. The original paper calls them, "Very active gold nanorods...". That makes much more [honest] sense.
Re: (Score:3)
How are they not motors, just because they're wirelessly powered?
Re: (Score:2)
If you would power a baseball externally (throw it) would you call the baseball a motor?
A motor uses energy to create motion. The definition is imprecise in common usage, but conversion of one
form of energy (electrical, chemical, etc.) into kinetic energy or some form of work is generally required.
The pitcher or the batter could qualify as motors in the strictest sense, they turn chemical energy into kinetic energy.
The baseball simply qualifies as the load. Something upon which work is performed. It acquires kinetic energy, but
all it can do is hand that kinetic energy off to some other object
Re: (Score:2)
And, like baseballs, the nanorods in the article appear to "consume no juice", and thus would not qualify as motors.
Now, you could perhaps consider the entire nanorods + external ultrasound + magentic field generator system to be a motor(s), but in that case the motor is not within the cell, only the armature(s) is.
Bad nomenclature aside, I suspect this will allow us to start developing a whole new level of understanding of cellular biology.
Re: (Score:2)
If you take the position that the energy source must be located within some arbitrary boundary along with the mechanism to qualify as a motor, then you eliminate any solar powered devices, microwave powered, ore even heat powered devices.
Re: (Score:2)
As you point out yourself, traditionally the definition of motor is a machine for converting energy into motion. It doesn't matter where the energy is stored, just where it's converted. And in this case I would argue that's in the ultrasound and magnetic generators - the nanorods are just chunks of metal tuned to be receptive to the manipulating forces.
Re: (Score:2)
That is not powering it externally. The moment it leaves your hand, no more energy is being input.
Old News (Score:2)
This is old news. Raquel Welsh did this years ago in the Fantastic Voyage.
A couple things... (Score:3)
A couple things...
The environment inside a cell is nothing like a lake or ocean that you can go merrily boating through. The cell is packed with molecules jostling each other around and it's random thermal motion that rules that world. Overcoming that with a motor and expecting to maneuver around to specific places just does not seem like it is going to be effective.
Nature is actually quite fond of electric motors (you have lots of them in every cell in the form of ATP Synthase, and they're used by bacteria to drive flagella etc.) but has apparently not found them useful for maneuvering around inside a cell.
G.
Re: (Score:2)
If we get to the level of making tiny machines the enter cells and do stuff for us, it makes sense to give them motors to get them where they are needed.
We've been making tiny motors to get into cells since forever.
Go ask your daddy.
Re: (Score:2)
Nature is actually quite fond of electric motors (you have lots of them in every cell in the form of ATP Synthase, and they're used by bacteria to drive flagella etc.) but has apparently not found them useful for maneuvering around inside a cell.
G.
Apart from from myosin 1 an ATP powered 'motor' that moves intra cellular vesicles around within almost every cell!
Oh and they use ATP so are ATP hydrolysers not synthases
Re: (Score:2)
Under an electron microscope a cell is like a swath of very strange terrain with weirder inhabitants.
Re: (Score:2)
The environment inside a cell is nothing like a lake or ocean that you can go merrily boating through. The cell is packed with molecules jostling each other around and it's random thermal motion that rules that world. Overcoming that with a motor and expecting to maneuver around to specific places just does not seem like it is going to be effective
It has been proposed that at least some motor proteins use that brownian motion as the way to move around in a cellular environment [nih.gov]. Using a force already necessarily present to move stuff is more efficient than generating a magnetic field, that's likely the reason it's preferred to magnetic movement or electric.
Furthermore, I'd argue that the inside of a cell IS in an important way like a lake or ocean: at such small scales, momentum is negligible, same as it is in a cellular environment.
without reading the TFA, as usual (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Your suggestion about basically creating a DNA checksum of the original t
Re: (Score:2)
There is a VERY promising area of research using quantum dots. Tailor the dot's wavelength to IR and fictionalize it with an antigen. Once put in a magnetic field the dots emit IR attached (on a nano scale) to the cancer site.
Burn baby burn.
Ps: the dots can be used for incredibly improved detection cocktails.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I say: outstanding this will give us motivation to get off of Earth.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah..my post was pretty poorly written to top things off. It was pretty late, and I was posting it from my cell phone in bed..not a happy combo.
I think my cell phone must have turned "functionalize" into "fictionalize." In my nanotech materials class the professor actually talked about a "detection cocktail" which is really cool.
Apparently (this has been done in rats in vivo) scientists have been able to functionalize large amounts of quantum dots tailored to various wavelengths. So they can inject a bunch
the ultimate torture or assassination device (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I was thinking more along the lines of http://everything2.com/title/c... [everything2.com] but that works too.
Let me be the first to welcome... (Score:2)
Our ultrasonic powered grey goo overlords.
It would be cool if... (Score:1)
Stephenson's ahead of the curve ... again (Score:1)