Part-Human, Part-Machine Transistor Devised 77
asukasoryu writes "Man and machine can now be linked more intimately than ever, according to a new article in the journal ACS Nano Letters. Scientists have embedded a nano-sized transistor inside a cell-like membrane and powered it using the cell's own fuel. To create the implanted circuit, the UC scientists combined a carbon nanotube transistor, lipid bilayer coating, ion pump, and ATP. The ion pump changes the electrical charge inside the cell, which then changes the electrical charge going through the transistor, which the scientists could measure and monitor."
How is this human? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How is this human? (Score:5, Insightful)
So they put a transister inside a cell membrane. How exactly does that make it part human? Every living creature has cells that have phospholipid bilayers.
More generally, it is not true to say that a lipid bilayer is even 'biological' in any meaningful sense. Ok, so the ion pump that they used is biological, since it was probably extracted from a cell. There have been designed (artificial) ion pumps, however, which could be used instead.
Perhaps this is too pedantic, but this is really bio-mimetics rather than bio-chemistry... Anyway, where is Dr Baltar and his detector when we need him? Fracking toasters everywhere!
Re:How is this human? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Reverse Works Too (Score:3, Insightful)
Future devices could work just the opposite, where an outside electrical current could power the pump and alter how quickly ions are pumped into or out of a cell.
That has potentially far reaching effects assuming they can eventually find a way to install these things throughout the body (or even better just on targeted cells). You could install one of these devices on each cancer cell, for example, and power a pump that forced chemo drugs into the cells. That means that cancer cells would receive a much higher dose than non-cancer cells meaning less side effects and/or more effective treatments. Of course, there's a million problems to be solved before such a treatment could become reality, but the possibilities are endless.
If you could install one of these devices in a cancer cell, it wouldn't need to pump it full of medicine. Water or would work just fine. Pop!
Get the facts straight, please! (Score:5, Insightful)
According to the actual article, there was no cell involved, only proteins resembling a cell wall. Nor was anything human mentioned.
In short, the article describes how they rapped a protein layer around the nano-transistor and it worked. Then it speculated on what it might be able to do in the future.
While powering a single transistor from the cell is interesting, a single transistor can only be on or off. Since, based on the data supplied in the article, there isn't a mechanism to trigger the on/off state, then it seems to be limited use.
Of more interest is the mention of the research done at the Hebrew University where they accomplished the same thing but by using enzymes that the cell ignored. The reason this is more interesting is that enzymes may be able to be tailored to work with specific cell functions, versus just being powered by the the cell.
Re:How is this human? (Score:4, Insightful)
The new diet craze. Nano computers running vista, just copy a file and watch those pounds melt away.