Why Use Nanobiotechnology?

Biology and electronics have long existed in separate universes. But because biological molecules, like DNA and proteins, are roughly a few nanometers in size, and because physicists and chemists are now learning how to make electronic devices on exactly that size scale, these universes are colliding. The result is a new class of devices that combine the ability of biological molecules to selectively bind with other molecules with the ability of nanoelectronics to instantly detect the slight electrical changes caused by such binding. “What’s really interesting about this technology is that it allows one to take the inorganic components that normally would be nestled inside an electrical chip and combine them with biological molecules,” says Paul Alivisatos, scientific cofounder of Nanosys and a chemist at the University of California, Berkeley.  Read more about Global Biotechnology Markets Trends

Nanotechnology bears several marked similarities to biotechnology. Companies in both sectors tend to emerge from university research and require large amounts of investment over many years to bring out commercial products. It can cost millions of pounds to build labs and clean rooms, and to buy specialized equipment used in both fields, such as scanning tunneling microscopes for examining and manipulating matter on the molecular scale, and cryogenic storage techniques, used to control the movement of atoms and for storing cells.

One of the most prominent applications of nanobiotechnology is the sequencing of DNA at high speed in nanofabricated systems. Another example is control of the pathways by which neurons extend to make their connections. Nanobiotechnology is also contributing to the understanding of how neural networks develop and communicate. This understanding will prove invaluable for advances in neural prosthetics.

The technology can also be used to produce diffraction gratings, where the grating lines are composed of antibody molecules. Because the diffraction pattern changes when ligands or cells bind to the antibodies, these devices can be used to understand the basis of cell variation, and they can be used as biosensors. More complex biological systems can be formulated which approximate organs or tissues that respond to their environment. Another example of the potential impact of nanobiotechnology is the development of engineered interacting cell cultures that may be used to replace animals for drug testing.

On a very general level, the potential impact of products built around nanobiotechnology is tantalizing:

• Tiny machines that would roam the body, finding and destroying viruses or cancer cells. Superfast drug discovery at a fraction of today’s cost

• Ultra-specific drug targeting

• Biosensors for pollutants not possible with current technology

• Medical devices that use biomotors with moving parts no larger than a protein

While these are certainly exciting possibilities, the near-term applications of nanobiotechnology include fullerenes, fluidics, manufacturing, diagnostics, and drug delivery. Fullerenes are molecular soccer balls, and have applications that range widely, including drug delivery, drugs scaffolding, and medical imaging contrast reagents. Fullerene tubes, created by a similar mechanism as fullerenes, resemble rolled chicken wire and have potentially exciting application in electronics and surgical repair.

The implications for medicine and biotechnology are myriad. Besides sniffing out the barest whiffs of disease-or perhaps detecting a single spore of anthrax-the nanobiotech devices could provide far faster and easier diagnosis of complex diseases. For example, they could provide early warnings about heart attacks, whose calling cards are subtle changes in the mix of dozens of proteins. Alternatively, a single microchip could provide a comprehensive diagnosis from a drop of blood.

And for drug researchers, nanobiotech gadgets could mean new tools for discovering and evaluating potential drugs more rapidly, by screening millions of different drug candidates at once. Some of these more ambitious goals are likely to take years to achieve, but nanobiotech could lead to real devices that will begin replacing cumbersome lab-based procedures with cheap, accurate microchips in as little as two years. Shrinking down such ultrasensitive devices enough that they could be put on chips could have numerous applications in diagnostics. Stanford University chemist Hongjie Dai, for example, has built a device that can detect glucose with a single carbon nanotube, a large carbon molecule with excellent electrical properties. Though only a proof of concept today, such a device could be developed into an implantable glucose sensor for diabetics.

The scope of applications of nanobiotechnology is expected to improve in the times to come when not just lone nano detector but a dense array of them could be exploited. That way, one can rapidly look for thousands, even millions, of different biological molecules in a single drop of blood or other body fluid, allowing the diagnosis of diseases that have complex molecular signatures. One such disease is rheumatoid arthritis-an autoimmune disease with many variants, each marked by subtle differences in groups of proteins. Ideally, each variant would be fought with a slightly different treatment; in practice, sufferers today are generally treated in the same way. But, says Dai, a nano array could serve as a highly precise and discriminating diagnostic device, providing a road map for custom treatment.

These arrays of nano detectors promise advantages over existing technologies, like DNA chips, and ones under development, like protein chips. With nanoelectronics, no bulky, expensive equipment is needed, instant detection of just a few molecules is possible.

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