Biological villain turns nanotech poster boy
2 Jan 2014 by Evoluted New Media
In this modern age of research where ‘interdisciplinary’ and ‘translational’ are the watchwords of the fund givers – a recent piece of work has struck me as particularly germane. It has turned something utterly destructive into something potentially ‘miraculous’.
A team from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden think they may have found the latest nano wonder-material – not from yet another derivation of graphene – but rather from a protein associated with the pathology of more than 20 serious human diseases.
And so enter our interdisciplinary hero, Piotr Hanczyc, the very model of a modern biotechnologist. He thinks that amyloid protein – implicated in Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and CJD – could not only be used to detect and treat the brain disorders it is responsible for, but also open a whole new chapter for nanomaterials – including the production of ‘invisible’ materials.
How has he managed to turn a biological villain into a nanotech poster boy? Well he says that amyloid aggregates made in his lab are as hard and rigid as steel – but importantly the way in which they aggregate can be tuned by multiphoton radiation meaning the characteristics can be tailored for a specific application. One such application could be the creation of invisible meta materials which reflect light around an object rendering it ‘invisible’.
Nanofabrication often relies on the controlled, structured build-up of small units – so it is perhaps no surprise that proteins make for a useful substrate, displaying, as they often do, self-assembly properties. Indeed, cells themselves are in many ways miniature nanofabricators, albeit of the most complex order. Certainly viewing the cell as a factory is a tried and tested explanatory tool. But now one scientist is taking it a step further. In this issue we hear from Dr Stefan Klumpp who thinks that cellular proteomic management seems to take on the characteristics of the economic strategy displayed by successful businesses. Do check out his ideas, they make for fascinating reading.
