Designing protein-protein interactions—fitting together molecular machine parts?
Foresight Update 24.07—July 7, 2011
ISSN 1078-9731
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…One of the properties of proteins that makes them so useful as functional nanoscale components is that protein surfaces can bind to other protein surfaces in a defined geometry to form structurally-defined assemblies of two or more proteins joined at specific interfaces. A paper … demonstrated a computational method to design new protein-protein complexes between two noninteracting protein partners. …
A new book on supramolecular chemistry and molecular machines collects papers and discussions from the 21st Solvay Conference on Chemistry…
Among the novel applications of current-day nanomaterials to pressing medical problems are nanoviricides—nanomaterials designed to recognize and bind to surface sites on specific viruses, and then to destroy those viruses. This Business Wire from NanoViricides, Inc. was posted at Yahoo! Finance and other sites …
How solid are the theoretical foundations for computational nanotechnology? While there can be no doubt that computational chemistry is a mature discipline, there are occasional surprises. …
Robert A. Freitas Jr. (2009 Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology for Theory) writes:
I just put up a link to a DMS (diamondoid mechanosynthesis) paper of mine that was published about 6 months ago. It's my second published paper with our Russian collaborators (we already have a third one in press and a fourth one in prep) and is now available online …
Caltech professor Erik Winfree, who with colleague Paul W.K. Rothemund won the 2006 Feynman Prizes in Nanotechnology for both the experimental work and theory categories, and postdoctoral researcher Lulu Qian have designed a simple DNA gate architecture practical for the construction of large-scale circuits that could eventually involve thousands of gates. Such complex biochemical circuits, although very slow compared to current electronic computers, could be appropriate for the embedded control of molecular devices …
As nanotechnology progresses in manipulating individual molecules and atoms, it becomes increasingly important to understand in detail the interactions of miniature machines and individual atoms. As an extension of previous work developing a miniature machine capable of measuring the mass of individual molecules, the interactions of xenon atoms with a nanoelectromechanical system (NEMS) have now been measured to characterize the statistical noise caused by atomic fluctuations in this NEMS device …
As a molecular machine found in all living cells that is of central importance for the synthesis of the proteins upon which all life depends, the ribosome is perhaps the primordial example of a molecular machine. For this reason, a recent Open Access publication in the Journal of Molecular Modeling is of substantial interest to those wishing to understand how molecular machines could evolve to execute complex functions. …
—Nanodot posts by James Lewis
Advancements in technologies such as nanotech, robotics, and biotech are promising to make major differences in our lives in the not-too-distant future, as the Industrial Revolution did to the agrarian world — to do for the physical world what the computer and Internet have done to the world of information.
Since 1986, the Foresight Institute has been in the forefront of a worldwide community of visionaries who work to help shape these possibilities into a positive, beneficial reality. If you would like to help us understand the potential of these technologies, and influence their direction, please consider becoming a member of the Foresight community. With your support, Foresight will continue to educate the general public on these technologies and what they will mean to our society.
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Events
IEEE NANO 2011
August 15-18 2011
Portland, Oregon
NANO is the flagship IEEE conference in Nanotechnology, in which practitioners will see nanotechnologies at work in both their own and related fields, from basic research and theory to industrial applications.
Nano and Giga Challenges in Electronics, Photonics and Renewable Energy
Symposium and Summer School (Tutorial Lectures)
September 12-16 2011 Moscow - Zelenograd, Russia
The NGC2011 conference in Russia invites academic and industrial researchers to present tutorial, expository and original research papers dedicated to solving scientific and technological problems in electronics, photonics and renewable energy …
The Seventeenth International Conference on DNA Computing and Molecular Programming
September 19-23 2011
Caltech, Pasadena, California, USA
Research in DNA computing and molecular programming draws together mathematics, computer science, physics, chemistry, biology, and nanotechnology to address the analysis, design, and synthesis of information-based molecular systems. This annual meeting is the premier forum where scientists with diverse backgrounds come together with the common purpose of advancing the engineering and science of biology and chemistry from the point of view of computer science, physics, and mathematics.
Moving from Top Down to Bottom Up
September 22 2011 - 14:00 GMT, webinar
This IOP webinar will look at examples of bottom up approaches to engineering and manufacturing from different sectors including biosensing, electronics and regenerative medicine.
IPAS 2012
February 12-15 2012
Chamonix, France
The aim of the Sixth International Precision Assembly Seminar is to discuss the rapidly evolving field of micro-assembly, including the development of microfactories and microsystem fabrication.
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