EU Supports Research Towards The Construction Of Nanomotors
Nanotechnology is one of the most important technologies of the future. This field embraces research, handling, and production of objects and structures in the size range below 100 nanometres (a nanometre is a millionth of a millimetre), the boundary where living and non-living Nature meet. It thus includes the development of biological "working parts", as a prerequisite for their technological application. A promising interdisciplinary approach combines research methods of biology, physics, chemistry, computing, system theory and engineering into a "synthetic biology".
The EU has also recognised this, and has started up the NEST (New and Emerging Science and Technology) programme - an initiative aimed at supporting unconventional and visionary research in this field. An international consortium, co-ordinated by Prof. Helmut Grubmüller, has now been awarded funding for a research plan to pioneer the tailored development and production of artificial systems according to the blueprints of biological functional units. Their ambitious project NANOMOT aims at developing nanomotors, and at joining up them and their components in a system resembling a construction kit.
The idea of a nanomotor of this kind is based upon biological machines such as the "tail" (flagellum) of certain gut bacteria, which is driven by a flagellar motor and thus propels the bacterium forwards. A motor complex converts electrical energy from ATP (adenosine triphosphate), a molecular energy store, into a rotational movement of the flagellum, which is fixed to an "axle". Another example is the "packaging" of DNA (the substance in which genetic information is stored) into viral coats by a biological nanomotor with a rotating axis.
Nano-components of this kind are expected to be applied in the production of DNA, protein and antibody chips as miniaturised platforms for use in molecular-biological and molecular-medical tests and in targeted medicines with fewer side effects.
The NANOMOT consortium comprises the co-ordinating Max Planck Institute in Göttingen, the Universities of Osnabrück, Dresden, Oxford, Basel and Zürich, and the CSIC in Madrid. The financial support from the EU will total ~2.3 million Euros for a period of three years. The project has been formally initiated at a ceremony in Göttingen on February 10th. and 11th. 2006.
NANOMOT is the third NEST project at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry. Research funds from Brussels have already been granted for the construction of a high-resolution "nanoscope" (SPOTLITE; Prof. Stefan Hell) and for time-resolved X ray structure determination of small bio-organic crystals (TOTALCRYST; Dr. Simone Techert).
MAX-PLANCK-INSTITUT BIOPHYSIKALISCHE CHEMIE
The institute, founded following the merger of the Max Planck Institute for Physical Chemistry and the Max Planck Institute for Spectroscopy in 1971, is engaged on research into dynamics and spectroscopy of molecules in crystals, liquids, clusters and gases, the structure and dynamics of biological macromolecules, the basic principles of biological evolution, the transmission of artificial and natural membranes, processes of signal transduction and cytostructure in cells as well as with molecular genetic analysis of pattern formation processes during the development of drosophila and mouse.
MAX-PLANCK-INSTITUT BIOPHYSIKALISCHE CHEMIE
Am Faßberg 11
D-37077 Goettingen
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UE sprijinã cercetarea spre construirea de Nanomotors - EU Supports Research Towards The Construction Of Nanomotors - articole medicale engleza - startsanatate