Nanotech Building Blocks

Applying the power of nanotechnology to imagine and design better products of all types is part of CRN's activities. The involvement of Chris Phoenix, our Director of Research, in a grant project for NASA's Institute of Advanced Concepts has received significant coverage.

But the best story on the subject is by Kimberlee Roth, at Michigan Smalltech. Her report goes into some depth to describe the work performed by Chris, together with Tihamer Toth-Fejel at General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems.

Their idea has been to build something akin to a desktop printer, explained Toth-Fejel, that would produce complex, three-dimensional, human-scale products made from nanosize input parts. But the execution is, not surprisingly, complex and yet to be demonstrated.

Toward that end, the two have been working on the design of nanomachines made of silsesquioxanes, or hybrid inorganic-organic composites in cubic form, from which molecules of silicon hang on each corner. The cubic cage with silicon atoms at the corners is connected by atoms of oxygen, forming a unit of one form of silica, Toth-Fejel explained.

"That's the basic building block," Toth-Fejel said. “We'll take one cube and put some fancy organic molecules on each corner and attach another cube to that. You do it again so you have two layers of silica, and this second-generation cube has certain active sites. Under the right conditions, and if you position them correctly, you can use them as building blocks. It's like LEGOs at the nanoscale."

In cooperation with scientists at the University of Michigan, Tihamer and Chris have begun designing a detailed process to create these nanoscale building blocks. It's exciting work, with significant applications for space exploration and other areas as well.

The benefits are many, added Phoenix, including the ability to slash the transport and storage costs associated with manufacturing.

"One manufacturing system could rapidly make a broad range of products, including new factories, where and when they're needed," Phoenix said. "Due to scaling laws, small precise devices have higher performance. A nanofactory should be able to build motors a million times smaller and computers a billion times more compact and efficient. Well-formed covalent solids also should have far higher strength -- 100-times that of steel or better. Put together, these benefits look revolutionary, even disruptive."

Detractors say it's impossible. Phoenix says he's seen plenty of -- and done his own --calculations that prove it's not.

Toth-Fejel agrees. "I'm hopeful that within five years we'll have some pretty impressive tools, assuming funding. I used to think it would be 15 years, but that's no longer the case now."

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Comments

[Jay]

Tihamer has mentioned in an interview that he thinks the human proteome project will be done by 2010.

http://www.nanomagazine.com/i.php?id=tihamertothfejel2

I emailed him to get some extra info on this, but I have not gotten a reply.

Is there even an official human proteome project?

Is it really moving with such pace that it will be done by the end of the decade?

[Tihamer Toth-Fejel]

As far as finishing the human proteome project is concerned, it really depends on what you mean. The first part, of figuring out which proteins are coded by which gene, is fairly straightforward (even though there isn't a one-to-one correspondence between the two) and I'm only repeating what experts in the field have said when I predict that it will be done by 2010.

Biologist Ruedi Aebersold, currently at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, predicts that by 2009 we will be doing clinical studies using proteomic approaches. That means easily, quickly, and with good precision analyzing proteomes of any complexity. He foresees understanding all the protein pathways (i.e. metabolic functions) soon afterwards, though that involves solving very difficult data analysis and informatics problems.

Then, after figuring out the pathways (I guess that would be the human metaboleome), you'd then have to figure out how the metabolics leads to the phenotype (the human phenome?). Some people would lump all this under the human proteome (just as some were lumping it all under genomics when that project got started).

Because of the inherent nebulosity of proteomics, there is no "Human Proteome Project" per se in the U.S. or any other country, but the Human Proteome Organization (HUPO) acts as an international clearinghouse and sponsors conferences and seven initiatives (I'm not sure whether the internationalization will make it more or less successful; I hope so). Work on important bits and pieces of the human proteome is being carried out by different organizations. For example, the National Cancer Institute and the FDA's Clinical Proteomics Initiative is aimed at correlating protein and gene expression patterns for early detection and cancer screening, for establishing therapeutic response endpoints, and for monitoring drug toxicity during treatment. Also, the NIH (through the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) has funded The Proteomics Research Resource for Integrative Biology at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, along with Proteomics Research Centers at University of Michigan, Scripps Research Institute, Myriad Genetics, Harvard Institute of Genetics, Caprion Pharmaceuticals, and Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Their mission is primarily to find new ways to fight pathogens.

The problem with predicting the *results* of the human proteome project is that it would be guessing at new science, not engineering. Science is much less predictable (i.e. like not at all), while predicting the results of engineering work is fairly accurate (given a decent budget and smart people). That said, nanotech engineering developments will make it easier to get at the new science. I really went out on a limb to predict that things will get very interesting, but what the heck; as Alan Kay said, "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." So let's get to work.

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