From: Spudboy100@aol.com
Date: Sun Feb 16 2003 - 02:49:03 MST
http://www.anl.gov/OPA/news03/news030214.htm
<<ARGONNE, Ill. (Feb. 14, 2003) — Building on tiny organisms, researchers at
the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory are helping to
create a new generation of tiny machines for electronic and photonic devices.
Working with colleagues from NASA and the SETI Institute, the researchers
built bioengineered nanoscale arrays, using genetically engineered proteins
as templates to create honeycomb-like patterns of gold and a semiconducting
material. Each cell in the array is just 20 nanometers (billionths of a
meter) across — 5,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. Current
lithographic techniques that produce similar arrays are limited to about 100
nm.
"Nanofabrication is all about making very small things better, faster and
more simply," said Nestor Zaluzec, who heads Argonne's <A HREF="http://146.139.72.10/docs/anl/TPM/TPMHomePage.html">Telepresence
Microscopy Laboratory</A>. "Biological systems can self-organize and do much of
the work by themselves."
The research team included principal investigators Jonathan Trent and Andrew
McMillan of NASA's Ames Research Center, who performed their research at
Argonne without leaving their home base in California.
The NASA-Ames researchers began by isolating a protein from Sulfolobus
shibatae, a bacterium that lives in geothermal hot-springs and can tolerate
near-boiling temperatures and high acidities. Trent and McMillan genetically
modified an S. shibatae protein to create a chemically active site on its
edge. The protein was cloned into a harmless form of Escherichia coli
bacteria, which can be grown easily in vats. Heating the resulting brew
destroyed the E.Coli proteins, allowing the team to isolate large amounts of
the heat-tolerant Sulfolobus protein. >>
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