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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.
. . . 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
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.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
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.
At the bottom of the
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.
Kickbacks, perhaps?
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.
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...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!
[i]this will help biologists to better understand nuclear processes[/i]
Nucular - it's nucular.
Stachel
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.
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.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
To look at a cell using a microscope you have to take it out of the living thing it belonged to.
"If it's real, then it gets more interesting the closer you examine it. If it's not real, just the opposite is true." -
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.
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.
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
Is because Steve Gibson codes them with 100% Assembly Language.
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.
It deserves at least a "+1 Interesting".
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.
linky
Ah, well, it's only karma after all.
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".
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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.