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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."
One step closer to Borg technology. Awesome.
That's not news. My girlfriend been telling me I've a nano-sized probe for years, now.
FrisT psOT! !! one one!!! I R teh LAME!
. . . if they show me how mitochondria replicate.
"such as DNA replication"
Genetic pr0n? Sure tells us a lot about the minds of scientists.
Am I the only one who's scared that they've managed to create nanobots that can stay inside of us?
..medichlorians.
umop apisdn aw pow f,uop aseald
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
I for one, welcome our new nanobot overlords.
In Soviet Russia, you stay inside nanobot!
1) Create nanobots cabable of staying inside people
2) ?????
3) Profit!
All your nanobots are belong to us!
GREY GOo
Put freakin' laser-beams on the heads of those nano-probes and have them kill cancer?
Get your Unix fortune now!
That's my nickname for my ex-boyfriend! /here all week //try the veal
Evil sig is livE.
I, for one, welcome our nanoprobe overlords!
In Korea, only old people put all the lame jokes in one comment.
1/3 of jokes get modded OT. If you get the joke, mod 1 in 3 insightful/interesting/underrated to restore karma balance.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
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.
WTF?
If you are willing to moderate something, at least know what you are moderating
Mitochrondia are essential to any cell. And yes, they do replicate, and yes, they do have DNA, and yes, they are fucking important.
Mods on crack.
"They've got seven billion nanoprobes in them each! On the open market, that's over a hundred million bars of gold-pressed latinum for them!"
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
Now we have nanoprobes that are stable and can communicate.
:)
Guess the only item on TODO list is the actual assimilation.
I refuse to use
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?
Posting messages for the betterment of humanity..
from his last troll attempt story
lee sums it up
here
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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.
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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
Is it in?
/rimshot
Get your Unix fortune now!
...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!
Anal-Probes Stay Inside a ...
wake up, wake up !
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
but without his shitty advert laden spam site, i shall hilight Rolands input
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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...
Here is a short description of what the researchers achieved.
"Our work represents the first time a biologist can image long-term phenomena within the nuclei of living cells," says Fanqing Chen of Berkeley Lab's Life Sciences Division, who developed the technique with Daniele Gerion of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Their success lies in specially prepared crystalline semiconductors composed of a few hundred or thousand atoms that emit different colors of light when illuminated by a laser. Because these fluorescent probes are stable and nontoxic, they have the ability to remain in a cell's nucleus -- without harming the cell or fading out -- much longer than conventional fluorescent labels.
This could give biologists a ringside seat to nuclear processes that span several hours or days, such as DNA replication, genomic alterations, and cell cycle control. The long-lived probes may also allow researchers to track the effectiveness of disease-fighting drugs that target these processes.
A nano-sized probe entering a cell's nucleus On this image showing how a nano-sized probe is entering a cell's nucleus, "a large aggregate of immobile dots is indicated with the red arrow, while the circled stars and arrows indicate dots that move." (Credit: LBL)
The two researchers closely collaborated with Paul Alivisatos, director of the Materials Sciences Division at LBNL, who's working on quantum dots for several years now. Here are two links to previous entries about Alivisatos research, "Nano Tetrapods With Tunable 'Legs'," and "Nanotech solar cells: Portable Plastic Power."
So, Chen and Gerion thought it was possible to introduce these quantum dots inside a cell's nucleus. And they did it.
First, they had to breach the nuclear membrane, which has pores that are only about 20 nanometers wide. To fit through these tiny slits, Chen and Gerion used an especially compact cadmium selenide/zinc sulfide quantum dot coated with silica. Next, they stole a trick from a virus's playbook to smuggle this nanocrystal past the highly selective membrane that guards the entrance into the nucleus.
Chen and Gerion obtained a portion of this protein and attached it to the quantum dot. The result is a hybrid quantum dot, part biological molecule and part nano-sized semiconductor, that is small enough to slide through the nuclear membrane's pores and believable enough to slip past the membrane's barriers.
And what are they working on now?
In the future, they hope to tailor quantum dots to track specific chemical reactions inside nuclei, such as how proteins help repair DNA after irradiation.
They also hope to target other cellular organelles besides the nucleus, such as mitochondria and Golgi bodies. And because quantum dots emit different colors of light based on their size, they can be used to observe the transfer of material between cells.
However, with their current nano-probes, they're already able to know if "a drug has arrived where it is supposed to, and if it is having the desired impact."
The research work has been published by Nano Letters on September 9, 2004 (Volume 4, Issue 10, Pages 1827 -1832)
Hey, gimme a pack of Borg's nanoprobes and gotcha!
[i]this will help biologists to better understand nuclear processes[/i]
Nucular - it's nucular.
Stachel
though it was listed as a side item: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/2 0/0149205
Everyone's going to make arse and anal probe jokes on this one, but, when I'm inside my Kombi I feel like I'm a probe floating inside a cell.
http://ash.anu.edu.au/kombi/
Offtopic? Blah, of course it's not, I mentioned probes didn't I? Consider it more of an opinion piece :).
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.
It's a well known fact that new technologies don't catch up until they can be used for pr0n.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
The Truth About Roland Piqawhatever.
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!
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
The time to 8eet And that The floor
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
Nuffsaid
________
Don't know about his cat, but Schroedinger is definitely dead.
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?
People want toys. Imagine how many teenagers would think themselves t3H c00l357 with fluorescent body parts.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
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.
Is because Steve Gibson codes them with 100% Assembly Language.
KKep, and I won't butts are exposed vitality. Its of playing your ARE HAVING TROUBLE result of a quarrel whole has lost real problems that it5elf. You can't First, you have to
I'm sorry, I read the headline as "Nano-pubes".
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.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
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.
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?
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".
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
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.