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Human Cells Naturally 'Eat' Silicon Nanowires (ieee.org)
the_newsbeagle writes: By showing that human cells naturally engulf minuscule silicon nanowires, a material scientist from the University of Chicago has opened the way to intracellular electronics. Applications could include very specialized drug delivery, electrically stimulating the organelles inside the cell, or recording the signals that pass between those internal structures. From IEEE Spectrum: "Using both an electron microscope and a specialized optical imaging tool designed by the team, the group recorded the eating of the nanowires in detail. It appears that the cell's outer membrane folds itself like a pocket, grabs the nanowire, and envelops it in a membrane-lined bubble. The process is called phagocytosis; it's the same method used by immune cells to grab a bit of bacteria and swallow it up. Once the nanowire is inside, the cell's machinery then shuttles it through its system with sudden bursts of speed -- up to 99.4 nanometers per second -- and deposits it just outside the cell's nucleus. Tian's group made a video of the process (complete with melodramatic accompaniment)."
I can't be the only one who read the summary as "A mad scientist from the University of Chicago"
what good is it to control a couple of cells?
Being able to get a nanowire to 'terminate' inside a cell is a big step forward for biological to electronic interfaces. In particular it helps open the door to being able to directly wire an implant to brain cells, as opposed to the rather crude methods currently being experimented with (which are basically just a spike right through the tissue). Next is to try to be able to do it on a larger scale.
But as usual, the summary is absolute shit. The cells are NOT "eating" nanowires, that would indicate they are dissolving/digesting or otherwise destroying them. Getting them to engulf the wires is far more exciting in terms of what sort of applications this could have, in particular because they are NOT "eating" them.
I seem to once remember hearing another example of nanostructures finding their way into cells easily, and it didn't go well for the cell, in the longer run. I certainly hope they're doing extended life testing with this.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I, for one, welcome our silicon nanowire overlords.
Wouldn't that be "innerlords"?
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
Probably because it has a good chance of causing cancer. The mechanism sounds awfully like what happens with asbestos fibers.
How do you intend to use this to fight cancer? Yes, you might be able to use it as a delivery mechanism, but there's no easy way to differentiate cancer cells from regular cells. Nothing here jumps out as doing something different that's relevant. Most things we use on cancer (radiation, and chemo) work by differentiating between regular cells and cancer cells, generally using the fact that cancer cells are always reproducing. No aspect of this process has anything to do with cell reproduction.
One of your premises is wrong. Radiation therapy works because it kills more cancer cells than normal cells. due to the self-repair process being inhibited for cancer cells, likely because they spend the energy on reproducing. But we don't need to know which ones are which. We bathe the general area in radiation, which causes DNA damage, which the healthy cells repair much more than cancer cells do.
Any other treatment that could produce genetic damage to cells can similarly be used, with the dosage controlled to damage healthy cells no more than can be repaired.
Would this open for such a treatment? Possibly - possibly not. But it should not be dismissed summarily without further investigation.
Slashdot readers are technical people but are usually trained in the computer and engineering sciences. I'm a biochemist and I've been here since the beginning but I certainly do not come here for biological quality.
I perused the paper. It is in a good journal and it looks like some good work.
Single application question: how does phagocytosis of silicon nanowires differ in any significant way from good old run of the mill asbestos?
Answer: for those dreaming of a bioelectric interface I put forward that these silicon nanowires will cause cancer.
The authors do not address this and do not provide any experiment that would overcome this hurdle.
They swallow them, but they don't break them down, which means that when the cell dies (which it will), the material goes on a second journey and so on.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Human cells also gobble up asbestos fibres, if I remember correctly. I would be interested in knowing what studies are being made to check out potential negative consequences - as well as, of course, what this research promisis.