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Will You Ride This Nano-Elevator?
Roland Piquepaille writes "Chemists from Italy and at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) have built the world's smallest elevator. It is a molecular elevator, about 2.5 nanometers high and 3.5 nanometers wide. The molecular platform sits on three legs which can move up and down by one nanometer. The New Scientist and the New York Times (free registration needed) are both reporting about this nano-elevator. The researchers think this system might be used as a drug delivery system. Even if they're right, it will not happen before at least ten years. This overview contains some excerpts from the two articles mentioned above. It also includes a schematical representation of the chemical equilibrium between the two co-conformations of the molecular elevator."
I find it highly unlikely that moving something 1 nanometer will be usful for delivering drugs. It is a shame researchers have to pretend that their research does something it doesn't just to get funding. I know there are many other people here who would agree with me that more funding is needed for the general pursuit of knowledge that has nothing to do with the bottom line of a company.
These drugs should just take the nanostairs. They're getting a little nano-pudgy.
"when life gets complicated, I like to take a nap in a tree and wait for dinner" - Hobbes.
I'm trying really hard to have a "first post" here. The first on-topic and non-joke post. I'm not having much luck, so I'll AC it.
Bzzzzzzt...
Chong: (presses intercom button) Who is it?
Cheech: (hushed) It's Dave man, let me in.
Chong: Dave's not here
Cheech: No man, I'm Dave. Now let me in.
Chong: Dave's not here.
Cheech: Quit messing around, man. I think there's cops over there.
Chong: I told you DAVE'S NOT HERE!.
Cheech: I am Dave! Buzz me up man.
Chong: Who is it?
Cheech: It's Dave!
"Billy, how many times have I told you to stop running up the down nanoescalator?
While this doesn't seem super useful for delivering drugs, this could be a good start to creating nanotech devices...
how big the elevator operator is. And does he work for tips?
-- There is no spoon. Only fork.
Science, Vol 303, Issue 5665, 1845-1849 , 19 March 2004
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[DOI: 10.1126/science.1094791]
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A Molecular Elevator
Jovica D. Badji,1 Vincenzo Balzani,2 Alberto Credi,2* Serena Silvi,2 J. Fraser Stoddart1*
We report the incrementally staged design, synthesis, characterization, and operation of a molecular machine that behaves like a nanoscale elevator. The operation of this device, which is made of a platformlike component interlocked with a trifurcated riglike component and is only 3.5 nanometers by 2.5 nanometers in size, relies on the integration of several structural and functional molecular subunits. This molecular elevator is considerably more complex and better organized than previously reported artificial molecular machines. It exhibits a clear-cut on-off reversible behavior, and it could develop forces up to around 200 piconewtons.
1 California NanoSystems Institute and Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, Los Angeles, 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
2 Dipartimento di Chimica "G. Ciamician," Universita di Bologna, Via Selmi 2, 40126 Bologna, Italy.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: alberto.credi@unibo.it (A.C.); stoddart@chem.ucla.edu (J.F.S.)
Biomotor molecules are extremely complex machines, the detailed structures and precise working mechanisms of which have been elucidated only in a very few cases (1, 2). Chemists are trying to construct much simpler molecular machines as a logical step toward mimicking the actions of biomotor molecules (3-5). In the past few years, several different kinds (6-14) of artificial molecular machines have been designed and constructed.
Here, we describe the incrementally staged design, bottom-up construction, characterization, and chemically driven operation of a two-component molecular machine that behaves like a nanometer-scale elevator. This nanoactuator, which is circa (ca.) 2.5 nm in height with diameter of ca. 3.5 nm, consists of a trifurcated riglike component containing two different notches at different levels in each of its three legs that are interlocked by a platform. The platform is made up of loops in the form of three macrocycles, fused trigonally to a central floor, that can be made to stop at the two different levels. The three legs of the rig carry bulky feet that prevent the loss of the platform. The energy needed to raise and lower the platform between the two levels on the rig's legs is supplied by an acid-base reaction. The distance traveled by the platform is about 0.7 nm, and we estimate that the elevator movement from the upper to lower level could generate a force of up to 200 pN.
The molecular elevator has its origin in the molecular shuttle, a degenerate two-station [2]rotaxane (15). The promise of this mechanically interlocked molecule (16) to act as the prototype for the construction of linear motors, based on highly controllable [2]rotaxanes, has been realized recently by redox (8, 11, 12), acid-base (8), and photochemical (11, 13) stimulations. In such systems, a ring component encircles preferentially one of two recognition sites present along the rodlike section of a dumbbell-shaped component. It is possible then (Fig. 1A), by using an appropriate external stimulus, to induce the ring to move in an almost linear fashion from one station to the other. Redox-controllable bistable [2]rotaxanes have already been incorporated as electronically reconfigurable switches into both simple memory and logic circuits (17).
Fig. 1. (A) Schematic representation of a controllabl
Will You Ride This Nano-Elevator?
Sure! Where is it?
(Nano-*crunch*)
Oh, sorry about that. Jeez, warn me before you leave another nanoelevator just lying around like that, ok? Maybe you want to keep it in a box or something.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
When you read the original article at Science, you will see this is no elevator in fact.
Stoddart et al have made a system which can move stepwise in solution by adding or releasing protons (acid). Since this whole experiment is done is solution nothing is going in any particular direction, everything is randomly organized in solution.
So until this system is fixed on a surface and can actually preform some work, e.g. moving a weight from one station to another, I think the term elevator is premature.
And if you want to be able use this system for some real work, you should move it out of solution and into the solid phase. This is one of the biggest challenges of all these kin of Rotaxane based systems
Brings new meaning to getting high.