Nano-Probes Stay Inside a Cell's Nucleus for Days

Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL) have developed fluorescent and stable nano-probes which can stay inside a cell's nucleus for hours or even days. According to this LBL news release, this will help biologists to better understand nuclear processes that evolve slowly, such as DNA replication, genomic alterations, and cell cycle control. This research was partially based on previous investigations about quantum dots. Now, the researchers want to tailor their quantum dots, which emit different colors depending on their sizes, to check specific chemical reactions inside nuclei, such as how proteins help repair DNA after irradiation. Read more for other details and references and to see how a nano-sized probe is entering a cell's nucleus."

Comments

Resistance is futile

[Anonymous Coward]

One step closer to Borg technology. Awesome.

Re:Resistance is futile

[fshalor]

Still a long way to go... It's one thing to get the machines we make into cells, it's quite another to understand what the hell's going on.

Just look at proteinsl; they provide structure, enzymes, channels (for transport of molecules through cell walls) and other rolls. Yet, we still can't deal with more than the smallest ones.

The benefits of this advancement lay in the little things, like now being able to put a "camera" of sorts in cells in vito!

I'm thinking more "inner space" than "borg".

Pah!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not news. My girlfriend been telling me I've a nano-sized probe for years, now.

Re:Pah!

[Lovesquid]

But does your nano-probe normally stay inside of her for days?

Only care . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

. . . if they show me how mitochondria replicate.

Uh...

[sp3tt]

"such as DNA replication"
Genetic pr0n? Sure tells us a lot about the minds of scientists.

Alarmist

[ossington]

Am I the only one who's scared that they've managed to create nanobots that can stay inside of us?

Re:Alarmist

[dan dan the dna man]

I think you misread "bots" for "dots"... if indeed you even RTFA ;)

Re:Alarmist

[Evil W1zard]

These really aren't nanobots. The definition of nanotechnology comprises any technological developments on the nanometer scale, usually 0.1 to 100 nm. In my opinion I believe that when you say the word "nanotechnology" most people today would think of super tiny robots (thanks to tv and movies). With that said these are not tiny little robots, they are crystals. So there is no reason to be alarmed because the the nano-sized attack robots have not yet been made.

Re:Alarmist

[qewl]

Why should you be afraid of something that actually has the possible potential to repair cells, destroy dangerous cell intruders, and maintain ideal chemical levels in cells? Sounds like a dream to me. Can you imagine being better than well?

Re:Alarmist

[Targon]

The potential for nanotechnology to go wrong and do something bad is still there. That is the problem.

If you have a technology that can repair cells, what's to say that a mistake couldn't happen that would create cancer or some other problems? That is the fear. Also, as the technology advances, it may become possible that new diseases are created while trying to come up with cures for other diseases.

On today's topic, I'm not afraid of what they are doing currently, but the direction will scare many people.

Re:Alarmist

[The Bender]

Well, you're pushing the lower limit a bit there. Nanotech is normally defined as 1-100 nm.
Otherwise it would include all chemistry.

Hell, even water is well over 0.1 nm side to side!

Re:Alarmist

[Tuffsnake]

I'm not really sure why this would scare you so much. There are so many other weapons already existing from guns to knives to bombs to missles to poisons (kinda like nonbots), etc - some large and some very small and hard to detect - that governments and terrorists and anyone else can use to attack people. This is kind of like being scared that linkin park is going to come out with a new cd that sucks terribly when they already have a few out that suck terribly. (IMHO)

Re:Alarmist

[Eosha]

Does that mean we can't use any "welcome our microscopic fluorescent overlords" jokes?

Re:Alarmist

[TheSolomon]

Actually, the term has been co-pted by anyone working on such a scale, much to the behest of Eric Drexler, the scientist who originally coined the term to describe extremely tiny machines.

'Nano' Suddenly a Gigantic Label

I believe he is using a new word, instead of nanotechnology, to describe his vision - but I can't seem to find it anywhere.

Re:Alarmist

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, now all we need is some nano-scale STAIRS!

Re:Alarmist

[DrFalkyn]

Nature has already beat us by a couple billion years. They're called "viruses" or in some cases "bacteria".

Re:Alarmist

[Spy der Mann]

For sci-fi and nanotech, check out "Grey Goo", a rather... weird... comic about nanotech.

One word..

[The Jon]

..medichlorians.

Re:One word..

[Anonymous Coward]

...These are not the nano-probes you are looking for ...

Re:One word..

[Anonymous Coward]

For the clue-impaired: read upside-down to get, "mod me up, mod me down: please don't mod me upside down."

-Another Random AC

Dear god, not another one.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is turning out to be another "Hello and welcome to Slashdot, I'm Troy McLure^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HRoland Piquepaille. You might recognize me from other blockbusters such as Raping Slashdot For Ad-Money and 10% Goes To CowboyNeal!"-day, isn't it?

-r

Re:Dear god, not another one.

[CdBee]

That's probably not helpful. Posting it as an AC, even less so.

Question to the mature Slashdot community. I'm aware that Piquepaille runs a site called Technology Trends which at a brief examination seems to be a reasonably typical tech site written from an insider's PoV, so he's well qualified to submit at Slashdot.. but how does he do it so often?

This isn't just sour grapes - I had a story accepted once and I rarely submit - but this guy's so prolific it makes me wonder what he's doing right.

Re:Dear god, not another one.

[edittard]

but this guy's so prolific it makes me wonder what he's doing right.

Control-C & Control-V, mainly.

Re:Dear god, not another one.

[johannesg]

this guy's so prolific it makes me wonder what he's doing right.

Kickbacks, perhaps?

Re:Dear god, not another one.

[Anonymous Coward]

A noble sacrifice of karma, my friend. However, I choose not to join you in no mod point land.

Re:Dear god, not another one.

[citizenr]

but this guy's so prolific it makes me wonder what he's doing right.

Its called money.

Re:Dear god, not another one.

[CdBee]

If Slashdot editors really can be bribed to take a story, don't you think we'd see a lot more favourable coverage of SCO's lawsuits on here :-p

I may be wrong, but I doubt it's that simple.

Re:Dear god, not another one.

[pavon]

According to the editors (from a post in one of these threads a while back) it is because he, unlike most of the potential slashdot submitters, can actually write a decent summary. You wouldn't think that would be very hard, but just look at how many blurbs there are with incorrect grammar, and convoluted sentences. Then look at how many put jump into details without explaining what the story is about, and put links on words that don't make sense. And these are just the submissions that are actually approved. I can imagine that the editors get an awful lot of junk submitted.

Re:Dear god, not another one.

[tomhudson]

I would've posted as myself, except i'm still working hard to get up to a normal karma level again :P

... I've got a few points to spare ... so let me help out ...

I'm thinking a bunch of fairly recent moderators would mark it troll immediately.. and the only time i want a post marked as Troll is when it's at +5 :P

... hopefully, the newer moderators will follow the linky below and see that there's more than initially meets the eye ...
linky

Ah, well, it's only karma after all.

12TH POST

[Anonymous Coward]

GREY GOo

Idea...

[ImaLamer]

Put freakin' laser-beams on the heads of those nano-probes and have them kill cancer?

Re:Idea...

[dokkeri]

Nanobots that search and kill cancer cells would actualy be quite welcome...

"Nanoprobe"

[jokestress]

That's my nickname for my ex-boyfriend! /here all week //try the veal

Re:"Nanoprobe"

[StikyPad]

Apparantly only jokes degrading men are ontopic.

Observe without interfering?

[amanox]

I'm just curious : how can they observer without interfering the process they observe? I'm no biologist, but I'm pretty sure the nucleus must have some kind of reaction to a foreign body entering it. Not to mention the recation coused by the illuminating the nucleus: these probes seem to emit some kind of light. This must have at least some effect on the readings they get from these probes.

Re:Observe without interfering?

[citizenr]

+ there was a "quantum" word used, and whenewer I see one I know that you cant observe without interfering





j/k ...sortof

Re:Observe without interfering?

[janek78]

It's been a long time since my biology classes, but I can't think of any reaction to foreign body inside a cell (at least not in the usual way). A cell hasn't got an immune system of it's own. Of course it has systems capable of expelling foreign/toxic chemicals out of the cell (exocytosis, pinocytosis), but it is altogether different from say your body's reaction to a foreign body. So these microcrystals will probably in some way interfere with the inner working of the cell (it trying to expell it) but they do not neccessarily need to interfere with the actual working of the nucleus.

Re:Observe without interfering?

[2stein]

I'm not a biologist either, but I do not think that the nucleis will react to the insertion of these probes in a way that they affect the observations. The nucleus is of 10-20 micrometres in size, whereas the inserted probes are made of a few hundred to thousand atoms.
The second thing is that I am quite sure that the guys at Berkeley Lab did think about interference with the intra-nucleus reactions. And if they can keep the things in there for hours and days, it's most likely not to interfere. It also says that the things are non-toxic (at the Berkeley Lab press relase) which IMO means that they did not cause any unusual reaction.
I also assume, that the illumination of the nucleus doesn't make any difference, as long as you do not use UV light. The cells of our skin are illuminated all day long, and they don't seem to bother as long as you protect then from excessive UV exposition.

Re:Observe without interfering?

[Lavaeolus]

You can actually stick all kinds of stuff into a cell without causing problems (unless you react with the contents chemically, or disrupt the cell membrane). You can even add functionality to the cell, for example by injecting additional DNA, and it will treat the new material as part of itself. This is how viruses work, and the only defense is to eradicate the virus before it infects the cell, or destroy the infected cell completely.

As to the light produced, I doubt this will have a negative effect unless heat is produced too.

Re:Observe without interfering?

[Anonymous Coward]

The second thing is that I am quite sure that the guys at Berkeley Lab did think about interference with the intra-nucleus reactions.

I'd imagine they would.

I also assume, that illumination of the nucleus doesn't make any difference

Don't assume that. We do, however, have a lot of experience taking micrographs over time using as little light as possible to harm the cells as little as possible. Therefore, too much light will harm the cell - but even now we're pretty good at avoiding that (Except in specific cases where the intensity of the light must be high).

Re:Observe without interfering?

[mforbes]

The word 'quantum' in 'quantum dot' is misleading. The dimensions of a quantum dot are typically between a few nanometeres (billionths of a meter) to a few microns. Smaller ones, down to a single electron, can be made, and at that size they would definitely be subject to the laws of quantum of physics-- but at the more typical sizes, they're too big to worry about wave functions, and behave more like the everyday materials with which we're familiar-- except for those properties such as hue and reflectivity that are tailored during fabrication.

For more information, check out this site.

Re:Observe without interfering?

[allnameswheretaken]

A cell does have a defense system of its own. How else would some bacteria have resistance to virii?

One of the ways that molecular biologists knock out genes that they wish to study is by a proccess called RNA inteference. They do this by inserting a peice of DNA with the complementary sequence of the targeted gene. The cell then transcribes both the gene and the opposite gene into mRNA, these two mRNA fragments hybridize forming double stranded RNA. A typical cell never has stranded RNA (virii do cause double stranded RNA though). The cell recognises the double stranded RNA and digests it an enzyme. The beuty of this method is that it can be regulated, instead of knocking the gene out they can reduce the levels of transcription or only knock the gene out once the organism has reached maturity

Prokaryotes have a much simpler method for dealing with foreign DNA. The deal with it by break down any DNA with certain sequences (say ATGA) which would cut on average every 2^4 base pairs

Re:Observe without interfering?

[Anonymous Coward]

fluorescent dyes are used in all kinds of molecular biology experiments; generally they don't interfere with biological processes although in some cases they do (some of the larger dyes do cause spatial hinderences). quantum dots are sooo much smaller than current dyes that they're virtually guaranteed to not interfere. and the light they emit is extremely limited; the cool thing with quantum dots (and their detectors) is that you can detect single or at least handful of photons.. that's not going to illuminate the nucleus. completely different size scales; it's like throwing a ping pong ball at the sun, not gonna affect it.

Re:Observe without interfering?

[LiENUS]

Just a note. Pinoctytosis is for bringing forein materials in and exocytosis is for sending proteins out of the cell via the golgi aperatus, neither are really for spitting out foreign/toxic chemicals.

Re:Observe without interfering?

[Persol]

There is 'defense' within the cell.

Lupus is partially do to the body trying to attack the DNA within cells.

Re:Observe without interfering?

[GeffDE]

The scientists can observe without interfering in these ways:

The only way that the "probe" could interfere with the nuclear processes would be by reacting with either the DNA or the proteins that are replicating the DNA. Because the probes, called QDots, are chemically inert chunks of semi-conductor, they are chemically unreactive. So no, the nucleus doesn't have any reaction to a foreign body entering it, unless the foreign body chemically reacts with whatever is already in the nucleus, and the "probe" is not reactive.

The probes work by fluorescing, which is a physical property of some materials/chemicals. It works like this: a photon is absorbed by one of the bonds in the probe, and an electron gets excited; electrons don't like being excited, so they give off energy in the form of another photon. Now, everything will flouresce a little bit, but these QDots are very fluorescent. Think, if you would, of a geiger counter, background radiation and a sizable chunk of enriched uranium. Same sort of deal, except that the radiation given off by fluorescent things doesn't damage cellular processes.

Now, I'm not a biochemist, but my father is. In fact, doing this sort of thing is his job, and in summary, scientists can observe these processes without interfering because a) QDots are unreactive and b) nuclei are pretty transparent.

Re:Observe without interfering?

[paulcammish]

...it's like throwing a ping pong ball at the sun, not gonna affect it.

Im pretty sure the ping ping ball would melt or at least burst in to flames - if thats not affecting it, I don't know what is!

Ohhh, you meant affect the sun... Damn.

Okaaaay...

[Shillo]

Now we have nanoprobes that are stable and can communicate.

Guess the only item on TODO list is the actual assimilation. :)

Re:Offtopic?

[nyekulturniy]

If I recall correctly from my biology, mitochondria manufacture ATP from ADP, which powers our cells. They are remnants of prokaryotic cells which entered into a symbiosis with their eukaryotic hosts. Mitochondria have their own RNA, which is passed from female to child in sexually-reproducing prokaryotes (and, despite the childish comments, includes Slashdotters).

I hope this clarifies why a mitochondrion is important.

Questions

[vishakh]

How is this better than looking at the cell directly using a really powerful microscope? Wouldn't it be better if you could actually see stuff happening rather than getting an indication that it is? Also, would using quantum dots save a signficiant amount of money by lowering the need for more advanced instrumentation?

Re:Questions

[godless dave]

To look at a cell using a microscope you have to take it out of the living thing it belonged to.

Re:Questions

[LiENUS]

Not only that, looking at a cell in a microscope can't show us things like the proteins in the surface, or where DNA is when the cell isn't going through mitosis. Nano-Probes have the potential to map a protein's path through the membrane a lot better than conventional methods which kill the cell.

Re:Questions

[cinnamon colbert]

neither the parent nor the first reponse are correct
if you look at single cell organisms, which "normally" live in, say pond water, you can examine them in pretty close to thier normal env. Or say, a sperm cell - that exists outside the body. And every scientist is painfully aware that many cells are not normal outside the body; there are whole books on this
Also, it is well established that you need a tag to look at, say cell surface proteins; this is done everyday. Not sure how nanoprobes help map a proteins path thru a membrane - sounds like gibberish. if you mean can it help map the route a protein takes thru pores, such as when a protein transits from cytoplasmic ribosomes to the nucleus, GFP fusions already do this very well

Lets examine Roland the plagiarist's site

[Anonymous Coward]

from his last troll attempt story
lee sums it up
here
-----

What is the concern with this blog? It's the absolute dearth of original information.

Let's look at the composition of a few recent blog entries, in characters:

Entry Excerpts Link Wrapper Self-written
Nanotech Swarms 2280 910 670
Nano-Probes 2185 767 1053
Toilets 1206 787 1006

Note that most of the "self-written" portions are vapid statements such as "But where is nanotechnology involved in this project?"

So, we have 52% of the text coming from plagiarism, ~ 23% of the text coming from introducing / pointing out links, and ~ %25% of the text coming from saying the obvious. That's the problem with the blog.

The technique used on the site is barely better than the spam search engines that link to (and excerpt from) Wikipedia.

----

i think that sums it up,
shame on the editors for such obvious spam , i gues integrity is dead
maybe we can feature articles from other spammers too ?, why write your own stuff when you can just copy and paste someone elses ?
its pretty obvious the editors dont give a shit and are more willing to side with a spammer than their own readers, no wonder nobody subscribes to this s(h)ite and blocks the adverts, two can play at the revenue game

so any other sites where real geeks can get their news ? because frankly im done with this spam fest

Re:Lets examine Roland the plagiarist's site

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't bother.

The editors don't give a shit about the site or the quality of content. Nobody is going to listen to you; just mod you down.

3 Words For Small

[ImaLamer]

Is it in?

/rimshot

fluorescent

[hovercraftSpareWheel]

...fluorescent and stable nano-probes which can stay inside a cell's nucleus for hours or even days.

Now we can mod our heads to match our PC cases!

Re:Offtopic?

[mailtomomo]

i think it's the other way around : ADP from ATP (using the ion as power source)

Nucular

[Stachel]

[i]this will help biologists to better understand nuclear processes[/i]

Nucular - it's nucular.

Re:Nucular

[josgeluk]

No, it's Unclear.

I knew I'd seen this before ...

[Jag]

though it was listed as a side item: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/2 0/0149205

Yet another Ronald Piquepaille article

[nyri]

I will give him a little credit as he links sometimes to intresting articles. But I must say that his blog sucks big time. He has scored a slashdot.org article 13 times this year. From Ronalds account page:
Robotic Nanotech Swarms on Mars... in 2034 14:54 Wednesday 30 March 2005
Nano-Probes Stay Inside a Cell's Nucleus for Days 19:42 Tuesday 29 March 2005
The Rise of Smart Buildings 22:19 Saturday 19 March 2005
3D Virtualization Edges Toward the Mainstream 21:57 Sunday 13 March 2005
Taking Care of Mobile Patients 20:20 Saturday 26 February 2005
Smart Holograms Used as Biosensors 20:22 Sunday 20 February 2005
Wearable PC with an Artificial-Reality Helmet 20:20 Saturday 19 February 2005
Transgenic Mustard Cleans Up Soils 22:38 Tuesday 15 February 2005
Elektro, the Oldest U.S. Robot 16:35 Thursday 10 February 2005
Open-Source Streaming Translations in Porto Alegre 15:33 Monday 31 January 2005
RFID-Equipped Robots Used as Guide Dogs 19:35 Saturday 29 January 2005
Streaming a Database in Real Time 23:58 Friday 21 January 2005
Morse Code Used by Human Cells? 20:05 Wednesday 12 January 2005
Engineered Enhancers Closer Than You Think 20:54 Friday 31 December 2004
Transparent Transistors Are Coming 22:20 Wednesday 29 December 2004
DURL, a Search Tool for del.icio.us 14:47 Monday 27 December 2004
IBM Prepares 100-Terabyte Tape Drives 15:19 Sunday 26 December 2004
With Linux Clusters, Seeing Is Believing 16:47 Monday 13 December 2004
Self-Adapting Traffic Lights 19:07 Sunday 05 December 2004
Robotic Science Network Watches Our Oceans 23:32 Friday 03 December 2004

I think I speak for most readers here when I yell: SLASHDOT EDITORS, PLEASE, NO MORE LINKS TO RONALDS NO-GOOD BLOG.

Re:Yet another Ronald Piquepaille article

[Muad'Dave]

Although I agree with your points, at least respect him enough to use his correct name - it's Roland, not Ronald.

Re:Yet another Ronald Piquepaille article

[bleckywelcky]

WHOOOSH ....

That's the sound of the joke hitting Mach 1 over your head.

Re:Yet another Ronald Piquepaille article

[Tongo]

Reviewing his posts to other articles, almost every one of them has a link to his blog in it somewhere. Sometimes his post contains nothging but "I posted this in my blog, here's a link". He doesn't seem to ever contribute anything.

This is a marketing strategy.

[TuringTest]

It's a well known fact that new technologies don't catch up until they can be used for pr0n.

Re:This is a marketing strategy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah? Then explain the wood chipper, machine gun, the space shuttle, and sulfuric acid.

Re:This is a marketing strategy.

[Lovesquid]

They have their uses in pr0n... get creative!

Re:This is a marketing strategy.

[Anonymous Coward]

You must not have the same, extremely creative, "snuff pr0n" in your collection that I do. Yes, wood chippers, machine guns, the space shuttle and sulfuric acid have all been used in highly specialized pr0n and I have the MPEGs to prove it. Just hang about on eDonkey and you'll learn a lot about the world of pr0n.

Re:Kombi Probes

[Anonymous Coward]

What is a Kombi? It looks like a shitty old white van. Make something cool like a solar car. What is the point of your website? To show you can work on a piece of crap? BTW, use Apache for your webserver and you'll find it is very stable. Not a 2.x release, use the latest 1.x release since you are on Windows. It installs so easy and takes very little to configure.

Re:Offtopic?

[Anonymous Coward]

mitochondria have their own DNA, not RNA

A real hit on the club scene!

[Muad'Dave]

Imagine getting some that fluoresce under 'black light' and putting those suckers in your epidermal/dermal cells! You'd be the hit of the club scene changing colors and glowing!

Re:A real hit on the club scene!

[404forbidden]

And with all the fun drugs travelling around clubs, they would probably start mutating themselves again..

Re:A real hit on the club scene!

[cas2000]

even more popular would be squid DNA - can you imagine a club full of humans with chromatophores?

tentacles would be cool and useful too...and possibly open up opportunities for a lucrative career in the anime tentacle-porn industry. :)

Re:A real hit on the club scene!

[Muad'Dave]

Funny you should say that - I'll pass on the tentacles, but I've wanted chromataphores since I was a kid. How cool would that be? My wife would know my mood without either of us having to say a thing. On second thought, that might not be good...

Re:Offtopic?

[Stile 65]

No, mitochondria use sugar to manufacture ATP from ADP, and other parts of the cell use the ATP to power their processes and thereby convert it back to ADP.

Also, only eukaryotes have mitochondria.

"Nano" everywhere!

[Nuffsaid]

How is this significantly different from the fluorescent marking techniques used for ages in conventional microscopy? It lasts longer? Big deal. Do calling things "nano" attract more funds/media attention? Sure! http://www.hardydiagnostics.com/Glossary-F.html

Re:"Nano" everywhere!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you're harshing my eXtreme giggafabulous infotanement eXperience

Re:"Nano" everywhere!

[cinnamon colbert]

in theory, the qdots ar more stable (less photobleaching) a recognized problem with std labels, and they have narrower emission spectra, so multiplexing is easier (eg std labels like fluorescein and rhodamine have wide emission spectra that overlap)(altho the lanthanide chelates have 10 nm fwhm)
potentially, you can tune the excitation and emission spectra to match your laser lines, so if someone develops a real cheap stable diode laser, you can tune the dot to that line
on the other hand, the qdots are big enough that they might not get to all the relevant sites.

Re:"Nano" everywhere!

[bodrell]

in theory, the qdots ar more stable (less photobleaching) a recognized problem with std labels, and they have narrower emission spectra, so multiplexing is easier (eg std labels like fluorescein and rhodamine have wide emission spectra that overlap)(altho the lanthanide chelates have 10 nm fwhm)

You obviously have never heard of BODIPY fluorophores, although I admit the admission spectrum is not quite as narrow as you describe. Multiplexing is easier with quantum dots, but you excite all of them at the same time. They have VERY wide excitation spectra, though fairly narrow emission. You are right about photobleaching; quantum dots are semiconductors, so don't ever photobleach. But some of the newer fluorescent dyes are pretty resistant to photobleaching. And the phycobiliproteins are amazing. The Terbium and Europium chelates have very long lifetimes; that's why they're special, not because of narrow emission spectra. It's time-resolved fluorescence, often used with FRET.

potentially, you can tune the excitation and emission spectra to match your laser lines, so if someone develops a real cheap stable diode laser, you can tune the dot to that line

So, you can't. The manufacturing precision is not good enough, and even if it were, there are "magic numbers" of atoms in these quantum dots, so you have a finite number of emission colors. Not that many, actually. The color depends on size, and size depends on the number of atoms. But again, excitation is not the problem; the dots have wide excitation spectra.

All in all, I think quantum dots are way overhyped. They are sticky, hard to passivate, and they blink.

Re:Offtopic?

[LiENUS]

Also, only eukaryotes have mitochondria.
More specifically I believe only aerobic eukaryotes have mitochondria as they are heavily tied to the utilization of O2 in the production of ATP. Anaerobic cells simply convert the sugar to lactic acid of alcohol without using oxygen.

Cancer cure in there somewhere?

[clambake]

So, if you could tag all the cancer cells with something that emits a beacon, then does that mean you could home in on them with a gamma knife and elimite them in any delicate part of the body with perfect accuracy?

Re:Cancer cure in there somewhere?

[merlin_jim]

So, if you could tag all the cancer cells with something that emits a beacon

There's a company that's working on an enzyme dye using jellyfish flourescence to do just that. This would work in theory even after it has metastized.

then does that mean you could home in on them with a gamma knife and elimite them in any delicate part of the body with perfect accuracy?

Forget gamma knife. Proton treatment is where it's at. Get radiation treatment for your prostate cancer in the morning, play tennis in the afternoon. Basically they create a 3D model of the tumor and modulate the proton beam's energy and shape (using a series of masks) so that the protons deposit most of their energy inside the tumor. There's a small amount that gets deposited ahead of it and none behind. Much cleaner/better than other radiation treatments. I've heard that with early diagnosis they're getting phenomenal success rates. And its outpatient.

Re:Cancer cure in there somewhere?

[StateOfTheUnion]

Researchers have been tagging cancer cells with antibodies since the at least the late 80's. The holy grail of antibody therapy is to attach chemotherapeutic agents or radioactive isotopes to antibodies. The antibodies would insure that the majority of the therapeutic agent is deposited on the surface of tumor cells. This would be especially effective for small metasticized tumors that can't be detected by conventional means.

Knowing people, its not gonna happen anytime soon

[mrjb]

People want toys. Imagine how many teenagers would think themselves t3H c00l357 with fluorescent body parts.

Re:Offtopic?

[StateOfTheUnion]

No, mitochondria use sugar to manufacture ATP from ADP, and other parts of the cell use the ATP to power their processes and thereby convert it back to ADP.

Uhhh . . . in a word, no. Sounds like the complexity and accuracy a high school biology lecture . . .

Mitochodria oxidize Pyruvic acid in a series of steps to convert NAD+ to NADH. This produces CO2 and Acetyl CoA. Acetyl CoA is further oxidized in the Citric Acid Cycle producing more NADH and CO2.
What you may be thinking about is glycolysis . . . which is the breakdown of sugar (typically glucose) into pyruvic acid. This happens in the cytosol OUTSIDE the mitochodria. It is important to note that almost any carbon based molecule in the body can be converted into pyruvate and oxidized in the mitochodria (fatty acids, sugars, amino acids, some nucleic acids, etc.)

NADH is then converted into NAD+ through a mitochodria membrane to convert Adenosine Diphosphate (ADP) to Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) along an inner membrane of the mitochodria.

A more accurate restatement of your post might be:

Mitochodria oxidize pyruvate derived from sugar, fatty acids, amino acids, and other sources to produce NADH. Mitochodria also use NADH to convert ADP to ATP.

I think this is old stuff

[cinnamon colbert]

See, for instance, the quantum dot company (www.qdot.com). What is new is using a bio tag to direct the dot into the nucleus; such tags ("nuclear localiztion signals") are well known in theliteratrue for proteins, so what is new is that they took qdots and coated them with one of these signals. So, this is an addittion to the large catalog of optical probes that biologiest have.

The reason nano probes are so small...

[vogonity]

Is because Steve Gibson codes them with 100% Assembly Language.

Ewww

[andy@petdance.com]

I'm sorry, I read the headline as "Nano-pubes".

Nanoprobes

[jhbradl]

I work in this field in graduate school and this technology is both old and new. The major problems right now are the toxicity on the cell. The actual probes can be modified or coated to exist within a cell without any major problems but when they breakdown, your body doesn't agree with some of the heavy metals that are released. As far as the word quantum goes, that only refers to the way that the electrons are confined withing the quantum dot. It is what gives the signal that you see. Safer particles are being synthesized and this field in the future will be used for drug delivery as well as real time visualization of cellular functions.

they definitely show quantum mechanical behavior

[bodrell]

Smaller ones, down to a single electron, can be made, and at that size they would definitely be subject to the laws of quantum of physics-- but at the more typical sizes, they're too big to worry about wave functions, and behave more like the everyday materials with which we're familiar-- except for those properties such as hue and reflectivity that are tailored during fabrication.

Well, I will admit that quantum dots don't have dual wave-particle like electrons, but it is utterly wrong to say that they're too big to worry about wave functions. That's the only reason they work--a quantum containment effect within the particle. They use zinc selenide and cadmium selenide because those semiconductors have different band gaps, and the outer coating prevents electrons from leaking. The fact that the color of emitted light is depends on the size of the particle is another indication of quantum effects.

Biotech Press Release via Slashdot

[william.gunn]

Who needs to release press releases anymore? Just get some old technology that, like just about everything prefixed with nano- these days, could be useful but is nowhere near ready for prime-time, and get it posted to /.
Few people here know anything about molecular biology, as the "longest chemical name" article made clear, so you'll get millions of hits with virtually zero risk of someone calling you out or asking inconvenient questions.

Re:Required Reading

[tomhudson]

It might be off-topic, except that many who watched the whole "Michael" thing think otherwise.

It deserves at least a "+1 Interesting".

I second it

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, Piquepaille posts are annoying. They have juicy eye-catching titles, but the site always turns out to be more or less content-free. We are never told who is submitting his tripe, but somehow it seems to always get posted. So my guess is he must just be a personal friend of one of the moderators who does the selecting.

Or is Roland on Slashdot staff himself?

A Primitive Example

[Master of Transhuman]

of why nanotech will accelerate science in various areas.

And why people who denigrate the probability of massive changes in human biology as a result of nanotech are ignoring the synergistic effects. Nanotech will speed up scientific research in many areas, allowing much faster technology development than most specialists think is likely in their particular field of endeavor.

Drexler predicted this effect in "Engines of Creation" and it is still consistently ignored by most "pundits".

sounds like nuclear medicine

[spectasaurus]

Imagine a technology where one was able to label a specific molecule, incorporate it into a cell, and watch where the cells go? Amazing? It's what we've done in nuclear medicine (PET and SPECT imaging) for years. In fact, just today I did this in a rat nerve cell.