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Tiny Motors Controlled Inside Human Cells
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."
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.
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.
How are they not motors, just because they're wirelessly powered?
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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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