Nanodevice For Weighing Individual Molecules

Physicists have created the first nanodevices capable of weighing individual biological molecules. This technology may lead to new forms of molecular identification that are cheaper and faster than existing methods, as well as revolutionary new instruments for proteomics.

According to Michael Roukes, professor of physics, applied physics, and bioengineering at Caltech and the founding director of Caltech’s Kavli Nanoscience Institute, the technology his group has announced this week shows the immense potential of nanotechnology for creating transformational new instrumentation for the medical and life sciences. The new devices are at the nanoscale, he explains, since their principal component is significantly less than a millionth of a meter in width.

Self-assembled Nano-sized Probes Allow To See Tumors Through Flesh And Skin

Nano-sized particles embedded with bright, light-emitting molecules have enabled researchers to visualize a tumor more than one centimeter below the skin surface using only infrared light.

A team of chemists, bioengineers and medical researchers based at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Minnesota has lodged fluorescent materials called porphyrins within the surface of a polymersome, a cell-like vesicle, to image a tumor within a living rodent. Their findings, which represent a proof of principle for the use of emissive polymersomes to target and visualize tumors, appear in the Feb. 7 online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.