From the category archives:

Nanoscience

Peptoid technology for molecular nanosystems — My review is now online

November 7, 2011

My invited review “Peptoids at the 7th Summit: Toward Macromolecular Systems Engineering” [pdf] kicks off the peptoid special issue of Biopolymers: Peptide Science.
Astoundingly, all the papers are open access.
Here’s the abstract:

Peptoids at the 7th Summit: Toward Macromolecular Systems Engineering
Methods for facile synthesis of extraordinarily diverse peptide-like oligomers have placed peptoids at the center of [...]

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An advance in atomically precise
building-block assembly

May 27, 2011

A paper in Science reports a design method that substantially advances the macromolecular technology base for building atomically precise nanosystems.
Background: foldamer engineering
As many readers know, biology shows an effective way build large, intricate, atomically precise systems: Use covalent chemistry to build chains of small building blocks, and design these chains to fold into nanoscale building [...]

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Polyoxometalate papers

May 3, 2011

Background: polyoxometalate nanostructures are cool (more here).
Lee Cronin sent me a pdf of the polyoxometalate paper I discussed in my previous post, and he notes that readers can download it here, with other papers on his group’s website here.
The Israel Journal of Chemistry has a new special issue, “Frontiers in Metal Oxide Cluster Science”, [...]

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Across the blood-brain barrier with exosomes

March 22, 2011

New work with exosomes promises wide-ranging advances in medicine, courtesy of an emerging biomolecular nanotechnology.
As pharmaceutical chemists know, the blood-brain barrier blocks delivery of many molecules that do wonderful things if injected directly into the brain, but injecting the brain isn’t quite as convenient as injecting a vein.
Exosomes are lipid vesicles manufactured by cells for [...]

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3D atomic imaging of nanoparticles
— a new technique

February 24, 2011

From the abstract:
Although atomic-resolution electron microscopy has been feasible for nearly four decades, neither electron tomography nor any other experimental technique has yet demonstrated atomic resolution in three dimensions. Here we report the 3D reconstruction of a complex crystalline nanoparticle at atomic resolution. To achieve this, we combined aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy, statistical parameter [...]

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Nano drug carrier (!!!)

December 8, 2010

This news just in:
A ‘buckyball’ — a spherical molecule made up of 60 carbon atoms — has been turned into a vial just big enough to hold a single water molecule….
The authors say that uses for the vial could include acting as a carrier for drugs in the body.
(News item)
As The Onion might ask, What [...]

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Nanomedicine by nanoparticle:
Toward killing cancer,
tweaking cell function,
and inserting Boolean logic

October 24, 2010

Compared to small molecules, nanoparticles offer more physical scope for functional engineering, and according to a report in Science, more than 50 companies are pressing forward to exploit this for cancer diagnosis and treatment. Nearly a dozen nanoparticle-based medicines are reportedly in clinical trials, and lab research suggests a road to programmable control of cellular [...]

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Electron cryomicroscopy
reaches landmark molecular resolution

October 17, 2010

Electron microscopes can image biological macromolecules in cryogenic ice, but it shows them as low-contrast features in a grainy image (see below). Using enough electrons to reduce the graininess would first destroy the specimen.
The trick to getting enough information without frying the molecules is to image many specimens that are known to be identical, and [...]

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The 2010 Nobel Prize
for Graphene Nanotechnology

October 5, 2010

Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov have just won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics “for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene”, and their work has opened a broad frontier in nanotechnology.
Graphene is best known for its remarkable electronic properties, which make it both a wonderland for physicists and a contender for future transistors with [...]

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Evolutionary refinement of engineered molecules

October 5, 2010

Blind variation and focused selection have made the biosphere, and they’re being used in the lab to make functional biomolecular components. The laboratory methods often go under the names of “directed evolution” and (in single-round versions) “high-throughput screening”, and they hold promise as partners for rational design in macromolecular systems engineering.
As background, here are [...]

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Stronger than carbon nanotubes:
Polyynes and the prospects for carbyne

September 29, 2010

Carbon nanotubes have a reputation for being strongest possible fibers, but polyyne chains are stronger, as measured by the critical strength/density ratio: Polyyne carbon-carbon bonds are stronger than the bonds in graphene and nanotubes, and the bonds are all are aligned with the axis of the fiber, the optimal geometry for carrying tensile stress. A [...]

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Forcible, reversible mechanochemistry

September 12, 2010

Chemists at Duke and Stanford have prepared polymers that break and reform C–C bonds when yanked and relaxed (paper here). They engineered these polymers to contain cyclopropane rings in their backbones, using the electron-withdrawing effect of a bridging –CF2– to weaken the critical bond (see figure). Applying intense ultrasound to these polymers in solution [...]

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