A Traffic Control System For Molecules

Roland Piquepaille writes "Our cells contain small protein factories which have to deliver materials inside the cell via a network of microtubules. And the transportation is carried out by biomolecular motors. Now, researchers from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands have built a traffic control system able to force individual molecules to choose between 'roads' by applying strong electrical fields locally at Y-junctions. This traffic control system can potentially lead to new nano-fabrication techniques. Read more for additional references and pictures showing how this traffic system works."

Minature Train Set!

[sc0p3]

Hottest toy for next Christmas! Train sets so small you can't see them!
Seriously though, as a biomedical engineer, this is bloody scary.

This was the first time that this orientation-dependency of the electrophoretic mobility was observed.

- This occurs in the body, we have microtubles and kinesin in all our cells. The 'research' has shown for *years* that magnetic fields have *no* effect on cancer etc.. so.. it controls Kinesin, but wont affect cells? please.

What took so long?

[sbhobdell]

This is all a bit old hat, isn't it?
I was pushing bloodcells around using dielectrophoresis in Uni over a decade ago. Shortly thereafter, water was being tested for purity using the same method, and one of the post-docs was moving tagged proteins around too.
How come it took so long to create a system to be used in protein manufacture?
examples:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/abs_free.jsp?arNumb er=297897 [ieee.org] (1994)
http://www.biophysj.org/cgi/content/abstract/77/1/ 516 [biophysj.org] (1994)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9351287&dopt=Citation [nih.gov] (1997)

Re:Maxwell's Demon now a possibility?

[Instine]

We're still missing the big one here re Maxwell's demon, which is that we're talking about a closed sytem, which means we need to include the energy gone into creating the Demon. In this case it would include the energy needed to produce human kind, inorder for the boffins to make the system, in order to order the molecules. Or would it? Because that would mean that we'd need to include the creation of the universe. Which means our little tubules have to process a LOT of hot and cold molecules.

Paradox busted I say :)