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Tiny Motors Controlled Inside Human Cells

Posted by Soulskill on from the much-easier-than-controlling-giant-motors-inside-human-cells dept.

cold fjord tips a BBC report about the successful installation of microscopic motors into living, human cells. The motors were propelled inside the cell by pulses of ultrasound and steered with magnetism. "At low ultrasonic power, the nanomotors had little effect on these cells. But when the power was increased, the nanomotors surged into action, zooming around and bumping into organelles — structures within the cell that perform specific functions. The nanomotors could be used as 'egg beaters' to essentially homogenise the cell's contents, or act as battering rams to puncture the cell membrane." Once finer control is gained over the motors, they could be used to for extremely small scale surgery, or to deliver drugs to very precise locations. Professor Tom Mallouk of Penn State said multiple motors can move independently of one another, which is important if we try to use them as a cancer treatment. "You don't want a whole mass of them going in one direction."

28 of 46 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Sorry guys by mwehle · · Score: 1

    I don't understand it - what's the point in falsely reporting someone dead? What do you get out of this?

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  2. Oh goody by Kultiras · · Score: 1

    Now we just need equally diminutive compute resources to attach to them and some self-replicating abilities, then we can start our own Collective.

  3. Motors? by coolsnowmen · · Score: 1

    How are they motors? the derive all of their motive power from energy outside the cell ( ultrasonics and magenetic field). There are more like selective energy receivers.

    Oh. The original paper calls them, "Very active gold nanorods...". That makes much more [honest] sense.

    1. Re:Motors? by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 2

      How are they not motors, just because they're wirelessly powered?

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      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    2. Re:Motors? by icebike · · Score: 1

      If you would power a baseball externally (throw it) would you call the baseball a motor?

      A motor uses energy to create motion. The definition is imprecise in common usage, but conversion of one
      form of energy (electrical, chemical, etc.) into kinetic energy or some form of work is generally required.

      The pitcher or the batter could qualify as motors in the strictest sense, they turn chemical energy into kinetic energy.

      The baseball simply qualifies as the load. Something upon which work is performed. It acquires kinetic energy, but
      all it can do is hand that kinetic energy off to some other object.

      Baseballs, unlike baseball players consume no juice.

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    3. Re:Motors? by Immerman · · Score: 1

      And, like baseballs, the nanorods in the article appear to "consume no juice", and thus would not qualify as motors.

      Now, you could perhaps consider the entire nanorods + external ultrasound + magentic field generator system to be a motor(s), but in that case the motor is not within the cell, only the armature(s) is.

      Bad nomenclature aside, I suspect this will allow us to start developing a whole new level of understanding of cellular biology.

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    4. Re:Motors? by icebike · · Score: 1

      If you take the position that the energy source must be located within some arbitrary boundary along with the mechanism to qualify as a motor, then you eliminate any solar powered devices, microwave powered, ore even heat powered devices.

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    5. Re:Motors? by Immerman · · Score: 1

      As you point out yourself, traditionally the definition of motor is a machine for converting energy into motion. It doesn't matter where the energy is stored, just where it's converted. And in this case I would argue that's in the ultrasound and magnetic generators - the nanorods are just chunks of metal tuned to be receptive to the manipulating forces.

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      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    6. Re:Motors? by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

      That is not powering it externally. The moment it leaves your hand, no more energy is being input.

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      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  4. Old News by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1

    This is old news. Raquel Welsh did this years ago in the Fantastic Voyage.

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  5. A couple things... by Gavin+Scott · · Score: 2

    A couple things...

    The environment inside a cell is nothing like a lake or ocean that you can go merrily boating through. The cell is packed with molecules jostling each other around and it's random thermal motion that rules that world. Overcoming that with a motor and expecting to maneuver around to specific places just does not seem like it is going to be effective.

    Nature is actually quite fond of electric motors (you have lots of them in every cell in the form of ATP Synthase, and they're used by bacteria to drive flagella etc.) but has apparently not found them useful for maneuvering around inside a cell.

    G.

     

    1. Re:A couple things... by zebadee · · Score: 1

      Nature is actually quite fond of electric motors (you have lots of them in every cell in the form of ATP Synthase, and they're used by bacteria to drive flagella etc.) but has apparently not found them useful for maneuvering around inside a cell.

      G.

      Apart from from myosin 1 an ATP powered 'motor' that moves intra cellular vesicles around within almost every cell!

      Oh and they use ATP so are ATP hydrolysers not synthases

    2. Re:A couple things... by icebike · · Score: 1

      If we get to the level of making tiny machines the enter cells and do stuff for us, it makes sense to give them motors to get them where they are needed.

      We've been making tiny motors to get into cells since forever.
      Go ask your daddy.

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    3. Re:A couple things... by Redmancometh · · Score: 1

      Under an electron microscope a cell is like a swath of very strange terrain with weirder inhabitants.

    4. Re:A couple things... by interkin3tic · · Score: 1

      The environment inside a cell is nothing like a lake or ocean that you can go merrily boating through. The cell is packed with molecules jostling each other around and it's random thermal motion that rules that world. Overcoming that with a motor and expecting to maneuver around to specific places just does not seem like it is going to be effective

      It has been proposed that at least some motor proteins use that brownian motion as the way to move around in a cellular environment. Using a force already necessarily present to move stuff is more efficient than generating a magnetic field, that's likely the reason it's preferred to magnetic movement or electric.

      Furthermore, I'd argue that the inside of a cell IS in an important way like a lake or ocean: at such small scales, momentum is negligible, same as it is in a cellular environment.

  6. Re:Weapons by Anubis+IV · · Score: 2

    This experiment was done on a HeLa cell that ingested the device. There's no word on how they would introduce this to a normal, healthy cell that was still part of a larger organism, nor of how long it would take to ingest it, nor of have they control it using the ultrasonic and magnetic forces.

    My guess, however, is that anyone targeted by terrorists intending to employ this attack would be more likely to die of old age first.

  7. without reading the TFA, as usual by Kevin+Fishburne · · Score: 1

    It sounds like this sort of research could be the eventual answer to "curing" cancer. As has been discussed extensively here on /., it's looking like there's really no cure but that it can perhaps eventually be treated so effectively that we'll think of it more as the common cold than the ultimate horror it is today.

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    1. Re:without reading the TFA, as usual by Kevin+Fishburne · · Score: 2

      Ask anyone whose life has been saved by chemotherapy, like my mom, and she can give you her doctor's name. It's a blunt instrument, but it has its uses. Seriously though, I did couch my conjecture with terms like "could", "eventual", "perhaps" and "eventually". My thinking was that nanotech and related fields could someday find a way to identify and modify or destroy cells we don't want floating around in us (cancer, viruses, etc.).

      Your suggestion about basically creating a DNA checksum of the original then comparing that to newly created cells, I imagine, would be the ultimate solution. Might even help out with long term space travel and such.

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      Buy your next Linux PC at eightvirtues.com
    2. Re:without reading the TFA, as usual by Redmancometh · · Score: 1

      There is a VERY promising area of research using quantum dots. Tailor the dot's wavelength to IR and fictionalize it with an antigen. Once put in a magnetic field the dots emit IR attached (on a nano scale) to the cancer site.

      Burn baby burn.

      Ps: the dots can be used for incredibly improved detection cocktails.

    3. Re:without reading the TFA, as usual by Kevin+Fishburne · · Score: 1

      Awesome. Thought you were trolling for a second (that's how over-my-head your response was), but Wikipedia backs up the quantum dots reference. If civilization remains relatively cohesive for the next century the future will be pure ownage from our perspective. Someday we'll be at the cusp of extending life to near immortality. I think people will, in general, be calmer knowing they're not going to die of old age. A new renaissance for humans, and Earth.

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      Buy your next Linux PC at eightvirtues.com
    4. Re:without reading the TFA, as usual by Kevin+Fishburne · · Score: 1

      You'll still have to walk through it and spit out chunks of it? You suggest a dystopian quagmire. The "calming down" part I mentioned would be necessary to avoid that sort of pollution. We'd heal the place, then coexist with and balance it.

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    5. Re:without reading the TFA, as usual by Redmancometh · · Score: 1

      I say: outstanding this will give us motivation to get off of Earth.

    6. Re:without reading the TFA, as usual by Redmancometh · · Score: 1

      Yeah..my post was pretty poorly written to top things off. It was pretty late, and I was posting it from my cell phone in bed..not a happy combo.

      I think my cell phone must have turned "functionalize" into "fictionalize." In my nanotech materials class the professor actually talked about a "detection cocktail" which is really cool.

      Apparently (this has been done in rats in vivo) scientists have been able to functionalize large amounts of quantum dots tailored to various wavelengths. So they can inject a bunch of quantum dots functionalized with various antibodies and/or antigens. So let's say they want to test for lung cancer and breast cancer. Let's say the functionalized dot for lung cancer emits at 450nm and the one for breast cancer at 480nm. So you just put them in a magnetic field, and watch for those 2 wavelengths..a high concentration of light means a tumor.

      Imagine that but with literally 50 or 60 types of detection at once. Supposedly none of the downsides or toxicity of isotopic dye. Though that is still to be conclusively determined.

      Carbon nanotubes and buckeyballs are equally awesome by the way.

  8. the ultimate torture or assassination device by redshirt · · Score: 1

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

    1. Re:the ultimate torture or assassination device by Qzukk · · Score: 1

      I was thinking more along the lines of http://everything2.com/title/c... but that works too.

      --
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  9. Let me be the first to welcome... by dlingman · · Score: 1

    Our ultrasonic powered grey goo overlords.

  10. It would be cool if... by breandan7 · · Score: 1

    this could be used to cure cancer.

  11. Stephenson's ahead of the curve ... again by ahowe42 · · Score: 1

    Sounds like Neal Stephenson's Cookie-Cutters are a perfect application!