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Category: nanotechnology

Synthetic DNA toolkit expands scientists’ ability to recognize genetic targets

A new method for recognizing and targeting DNA that dramatically expands the range of genetic sequences scientists can identify has been developed by experts at the University of Portsmouth. Published this week in Nature Communications, the research opens new possibilities for gene-targeting technologies, molecular diagnostics and DNA nanotechnology.

Dr. David Rusling, associate professor in bioengineering from the University of Portsmouth’s School of Medicine, Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, said, Our lab develops synthetic molecules that can recognize and bind to unique gene sequences. By introducing synthetic DNA bases into these molecules, we’ve been able to significantly improve how they recognize their targets.

I’ve worked in this area for around 20 years, and this is the first time we’ve had a system that combines strong recognition under physiological conditions with building blocks that are commercially available to other researchers.

Graphene plasmon cavities enable advanced and scalable terahertz photodetectors

How could we noninvasively distinguish between healthy and cancerous tissue? And how could we increase the speed of wireless communications? These two seemingly unrelated questions may share the same answer: terahertz (THz) light. Spanning frequencies between 0.3 and 20 THz, THz light interacts with matter without causing damage and allows for faster data transfer than radio waves. It is thus ideal for advancing many applications in biomedicine and telecommunications, for which simple yet sensitive and fast detectors are needed.

The challenge, however, is enormous: When detectors are fast enough and operate at room temperature, they suffer from high noise levels; and when noise is minimized, some work only within a narrow frequency range and under cryogenic cooling, while others offer broadband operation but at much slower response times. Far from defeated, researchers keep seeking ways to develop the (close to) ideal THz detector—one that could potentially turn noninvasive melanoma diagnosis or high-speed wireless communication into a reality.

ICFO researchers Dr. Domenico De Fazio, Dr. Sebastián Castilla, Dr. Karuppasamy P. Soundarapandian, Dr. Simone Marconi, Riccardo Bertini and Dr. Roshan K. Kumar, led by ICREA Prof. Frank Koppens, together with Instituto de Nanociencia y Materiales de Aragón (INMA), Universidad de Zaragoza, University of Ioannina, Queen Mary University of London, University of Manchester and Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2), have now taken a step forward in that direction. The team designed a novel device based on monolayer graphene that, under liquid nitrogen cooling, emits a strong electric signal when struck by THz radiation. The results, published in ACS Photonics, open a route to build practical, tunable and selective THz detectors.

Investigating quantum and molecular plumbing in nanofluidics research

Our body contains an intricate system of tiny vessels through which blood, water and other molecules flow. When the size of the pipes shrinks to the nanoscale, where only a few molecules can fit side by side, the classical laws of physics governing the behavior of water are influenced by the atomic structure of the walls. “It’s not that classical hydrodynamics breaks down, but rather that it gets mixed with the condensed matter physics of the solid walls,” says Nikita Kavokine, tenure-track assistant professor and leader of the EPFL Quantum Plumbing Lab.

How liquids, and water in particular, behave at scales of a few nanometers is one of the big gaps in modern physics. For example, in some experiments, it has been observed that water flows through carbon nanotubes orders of magnitude faster than expected. Scientists are trying to understand phenomena that biology has mastered after millions of years of evolution.

“At the nanometer scale, our body leverages specific properties of water to filter molecules with high energy efficiency,” explains Kavokine. Aquaporins, for example, are protein channels embedded in cell membranes that use these molecular-scale interactions to let water pass while blocking ions and other molecules.

[News] World’s Smallest Semiconductor Nanotube Achieved at 1 Nanometer

A research team led by the The University of Tokyo has fabricated the world’s smallest semiconductor nanotube, according to a study published in the latest issue of Science. Using boron nitride (BN) nanotubes as a template, the researchers successfully synthesized single-walled molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂) nanotubes with a diameter of just 1 nanometer—roughly one hundred-thousandth the width of a human hair.

The achievement not only validates theoretical predictions about the electronic properties of ultrafine materials made decades ago, but also opens new possibilities for the development of next-generation miniaturized electronic devices.

Carbon nanotubes have long attracted attention for their exceptional mechanical and electrical properties. However, slight variations in their atomic structure can significantly alter their conductivity, posing challenges for transistor applications. In contrast, MoS₂ is an intrinsically semiconducting material with promising potential for semiconductor electronics, high-sensitivity sensing, and quantum-scale physics research. Yet producing ultrathin, structurally controlled MoS₂ nanotubes has remained a major challenge, as stability and fabrication complexity increase dramatically as nanotube diameters shrink.

Superconducting TES array X-ray spectrometer goes into operation at BESSY II

Europe’s first and only TES spectrometer at a synchrotron source is now in operation at BESSY II, developed within a collaboration between the HZB, the MPI-CEC (Mühlheim-an-der-Ruhr, Germany) and the NIST (Boulder, Colorado, U.S.). The photon detection efficiency of the new instrument exceeds that of wavelength-dispersive X-ray emission spectrometers by a factor of 100 to 1,000. It will be used to investigate the electronic properties of atomically thin layers, nanostructures and highly diluted atomic and molecular samples. The team is looking forward to receiving exciting research proposals from the user community.

Synchrotron radiation sources such as BESSY II provide intense, highly brilliant X-ray light that can be used to examine a wide variety of samples. However, X-ray emission spectroscopy (XES) and Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering (RIXS), where the photons emitted from the sample are detected, are extremely photon-hungry techniques. Therefore, XES and RIXS have so far been largely limited to high-concentration and bulk samples. The details are presented in the journal Review of Scientific Instruments.

The next step after nanotechnology

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World-first spintronic p-bit on silicon chip points toward larger AI-ready p-computers

A Japan–U.S. collaborative research team has demonstrated the world’s first integrated spintronic probabilistic bit, or p-bit, fabricated on a silicon chip using semiconductor manufacturing processes. The team, consisting of researchers from Tohoku University and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, experimentally verified the operation of the p-bit, a key building block for probabilistic, or p-, computers. The achievement provides a pathway toward large-scale spintronic p-computers for applications such as AI and machine learning.

Many emerging computational problems require efficient exploration of enormous numbers of possible states. Conventional computers, which process binary information, 0 or 1, sequentially, are not always well suited to such highly parallel tasks. Probabilistic computers instead use probabilistic bits, or p-bits, which fluctuate stochastically between 0 and 1 by using intrinsic physical randomness.

Because p-computers can quickly take many states, they are attracting attention as a next-generation computing platform. Among several candidate technologies, spintronics is considered especially promising because nanoscale magnetic devices can naturally generate probabilistic behavior through magnetic fluctuations.

Nanomedicine discovery uses salt to overcome major obstacle in gene therapy

Researchers at the University of Houston’s College of Pharmacy have discovered an unexpectedly simple strategy to improve the performance of mRNA vaccines and gene therapeutics: adding salt. The findings, published in Small, address one of the biggest challenges facing modern gene medicine—getting fragile therapeutic material to the right place inside cells.

“We are introducing salt-loaded lipid nanoparticles as a novel and broadly applicable design principle for gene delivery,” said Fanfei Meng, assistant professor and Presidential Frontier Faculty member in the Department of Pharmacological and Pharmaceutical Sciences. “What makes this exciting is that we can significantly improve delivery efficiency without needing to invent entirely new materials.”

Lipid nanoparticles, or LNPs, are tiny fat-based delivery vehicles widely used to transport fragile genetic material into cells. They became widely recognized during the COVID-19 pandemic through mRNA vaccines developed by Moderna and Pfizer. Today, scientists are also using LNPs to develop new treatments for cancer, rare diseases and genetic disorders.

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