Self assembling nano technology

I, Brian · 11-23-2003, 10:29 AM

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994406

excerpt:

Quote:

A functional electronic nano-device has been manufactured using biological self-assembly for the first time.

Israeli scientists harnessed the construction capabilities of DNA and the electronic properties of carbon nanotubes to create the self-assembling nano-transistor. The work has been greeted as "outstanding" and "spectacular" by nanotechnology experts.

The push to shrink electronic circuits to ever smaller dimensions is relentless. Carbon nanotubes, which have remarkable electronic properties and only about one nanometre in diameter, have been touted as a highly promising material to help drive miniaturisation. But manufacturing nano-scale transistors has proved both time-consuming and labour-intensive.

The team, at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, overcame these problems with a two step process. First they used proteins to allow carbon nanotubes to bind to specific sites on strands of DNA. They then turned the remainder of the DNA molecule into a conducting wire.

Alexa · 07-31-2005, 06:51 PM

MJ, as a student in nanothechnology, what do you think about this article ?

Stalker · 08-02-2005, 11:29 AM

The humankind is on the verge of using nanotech on much larger scale, and medicine is the first field where it is likely to be introduced. Butthere should be given an extremely thorough consideration to it to devoid any back effects. Won't we invent a new nano-plague that will make us all extinct?

Alexa · 08-02-2005, 07:07 PM

You mean we'll create robots or other artificial intelligence ready to atack us ?

Stalker · 08-04-2005, 04:56 PM

It might be when the nano-cybermechanism become not only selfreproducing but also selforganised. It is going to become a kind of quasi-life following all laws of life, and thus evolving into something new. For example, you construct the prototype with all saveguards to function in certain evironment to carry out certain functions. The environment is your organism. It changes. The cybermechanisms "living" in it, will have to adopt. They will also make new generations of nanomechanisms, those, in their turn, ill produce the next generation etc. They are likely to "mutate" both on physical and program levels. Should I continue?

Alexa · 08-04-2005, 05:19 PM

Even if they mutate, a mechanism is a mechanism.They have a switch off button.

Stalker · 08-05-2005, 11:15 AM

It that concerns nonotech, I would not be so sure... :wink:

08-05-2005, 11:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alexa

Even if they mutate, a mechanism is a mechanism.They have a switch off button.

Thats the question once they are self-replicating and like stalker says evolving are they a mechanism or a life form?

Alexa · 08-05-2005, 04:58 PM

Do you really think we can put so much "intelligence" into a mechanism ? We can programme them to do want we want, so they are limited in their actions. We are far away to consider a nanomechanism a living one. And the problem stands in that "will have to adopt". We, as humans, think in a new environment to adapt to survive. But a nano-mecanism to take decisions by itself ? Hmm. I'm not so sure about that.

Maryjane · 08-06-2005, 10:23 AM

From what I see here it is an integration of carbo mineral based nanotubes like tiny computer like components (nanobots) that can replicate themselves and adapt to biological DNA mater, animal or vegetable mater. If they are self duplicating then I believe they would be programed to attach and replicate themselves all along a DNA strand integrating that DNA pattern into their own molecular structures memorie bank. Starting to sound more like Star gate don't it. :smilie: But basically the same idea so that the biological life form it has been introduced to would be a replication of that life by the nanobots half biological and half mineral and carbon based cells, especially useful for growing living tissue for replacement of damaged living tissue. to my opinion it sounds OK but that's projecting a potential into uncertain territory with a uncertain outcome into the future. Love

Maryjane

www.webspawner.com/users/cynthia932/index.html