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A Traffic Control System For Molecules

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the turn-right-at-the-corpuscle dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "Our cells contain small protein factories which have to deliver materials inside the cell via a network of microtubules. And the transportation is carried out by biomolecular motors. Now, researchers from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands have built a traffic control system able to force individual molecules to choose between 'roads' by applying strong electrical fields locally at Y-junctions. This traffic control system can potentially lead to new nano-fabrication techniques. Read more for additional references and pictures showing how this traffic system works."

3 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. Right! This won't go wrong by Quirk · · Score: 4, Funny

    As anyone who has to make a long commute to and from work knows, we've got traffic control down and running smoothly. Nothing could go wrong here.

    --
    "Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
    Cohen
  2. Minature Train Set! by sc0p3 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Hottest toy for next Christmas! Train sets so small you can't see them!
    Seriously though, as a biomedical engineer, this is bloody scary.

    This was the first time that this orientation-dependency of the electrophoretic mobility was observed.

    - This occurs in the body, we have microtubles and kinesin in all our cells. The 'research' has shown for *years* that magnetic fields have *no* effect on cancer etc.. so.. it controls Kinesin, but wont affect cells? please.

  3. What took so long? by sbhobdell · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is all a bit old hat, isn't it?
    I was pushing bloodcells around using dielectrophoresis in Uni over a decade ago. Shortly thereafter, water was being tested for purity using the same method, and one of the post-docs was moving tagged proteins around too.
    How come it took so long to create a system to be used in protein manufacture?
    examples:
    http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/abs_free.jsp?arNumb er=297897 (1994)
    http://www.biophysj.org/cgi/content/abstract/77/1/ 516 (1994)
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9351287&dopt=Citation (1997)