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DNA Assembled Nano-Transistors
Bob Vila's Hammer writes "In an article at New Scientist, researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have harnessed DNA to mold a nano-transister constructed of graphite nanotubes coated in silver and gold. The carbon nanotube assembly when completed is a fully working transistor when voltage is applied. The process is ingenious, using proteins from E. Coli bacterium to bind carbon nanotubes to certain sites on strands of DNA. Then graphite nanotubes coated with antibodies connect to the proteins. Finally, silver ions are added to the solution which chemically bond with the DNA site where the protein is attached. Further refinement of the technique is required before full scale production would be efficient, but this could allow the creation of elaborate self-assembling DNA sculptures and circuitry."
[heston] Microchips are made of people! They're peeeooople!!! [/heston]
Great... Now when the compter blows up, I'll get dysentery.
Will the new computers built of this material be more suceptable to virus attack!
For problems, seek only the simplest solution, complexity brings with it more problems.
this will put phrase 'my computer has died' into a completely new light ;-)
I can just the future.
"Humanity wiped out by terrible strain of life threatenning virus -- but it makes great video cards."
Finally a use for the moon. A clean room.
Could you imagine getting sick and having to sign an NDA and non contagion agreement?
how the Borg got there start...
Hogwash. (IEEE Spectrum isn't even a real publication, check google). It was Michael Faraday, and it was *way* before Angela Belcher even knew what a transistor was. Sadly, he was eaten by one of his creations: a bio-thermo electrolytic legume of his own creation.
Let's just hope these guys are more careful.
Michael Crichton's books are both good and original. Unfortunately, the original parts are not good, and the good parts are not original.
evil math within Nature's Cubic Creation!
Its not how long or when that should scare you, its the fact that resistance is futile.
[I can picture a world without war, without hate. I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it]
Chemical engineers, in my experience, are the worst of a bad lot of pocket-protector clad high-caste geeks.
I'm sorry, this is no criticism of your post, but I just realised it's 3:52 AM and I'm reading a website with discussion in which the following words can legitimately occur: ...adapt the proteosynthesis process for creating micro-polypeptide clusters that are circuit elements with highly specific binding sites for self assembly. A DNA sequence would encode an mRNA sequence that is passed to a ribsome-like micro-factory. An alphabet of tRNA units would carry heavily modified amino-acids and provide both the electrical and structural of properties of the polypeptide...
I think I need to take a very long hard look at my life.
If anyone needs me, I'll probably be in a remote temple in the north of france, wearing a simple brown habit, and chanting.
--
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.