http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/NE16Dj02.html
May 16, 2012 Bacterial magnets and the bio-computer era By Raja Murthy MUMBAI - Scientists are working to have some of the world's smallest creatures carry the growing mountain-loads of information worldwide - the next generation of information technology and medical devices based on bacteria, biology and billions of years of evolution. Researchers from Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology and University of Leeds are studying bacteria that produce magnets, and how these can be used to produce faster, cheaper, environmentally friendly electronics and computers. Magnetospirilllum magneticum are the microbial heroes in this story. These underwater dwelling organisms use in-born magnetism to navigate across the Earth. When these bacterial creatures are fed iron, scientists discovered, they generate tiny magnetic crystals. And these crystals can be designed to make the next generation of electronics and surgery aids in medicine [1]. Traditional electronics is quickly reaching limits of technology to make smaller, more powerful devices, says project leader Dr Sarah Staniland from Leeds University, Britain. So she and her colleagues are using Ma Nature's help to expand frontiers of nanotechnology. "Biology has had millennia to experiment through evolution," Staniland said in an e-mail to Asia Times Online. "Proteins have evolved which are nano-scale factories with specific function and purposes. We can use this to our advantage, and let biology build more precise nano-scale materials and nanotechnologies for us." Her project uses the same protein that builds these nano-magnets in the next frontier of nanotechnology. Named after the Greek "nano" meaning "dwarf", nanotechnology involves creating devices one billionth of meter in size. Staniland, a professor of nanotechnology at the University of Leeds in Britain, said her project aims to develop a "toolkit of proteins and chemicals" to grow computer and electronic components. The research findings were first published in the nano-technology journal Small [2] last November. Staniland had earlier worked in the lab of Professor Tadashi Matsunaga, from the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology seven years ago. There she met her current project colleague Dr Masayoshi Tanaka, and helped him earn a Royal Society International Newton Fellowship for him to work at her lab in Leeds [3]. Their collaboration could lead to computers fully based on biological systems, Dr Tanaka said in an e-mail to Asia Times Online, and devices that store, process and transfer information just as automatically as biological cells, More importantly, such biology-based nanotechnology could save lives in with better surgical aids. Tanaka has created nano-scale tubes from the membrane of cells. These "nanowires" made of "quantum dots" - particles of copper iridium sulphide and zinc sulphide which glow and conduct electricity - can replace less compatible artificial wiring implanted within the human body. [4]. "In our system, as various materials including wires and particles can be coated with biological fat molecule, it is highly biocompatible with the body," says Tanaka. "And as the material is hollow, like nano-sized straw, it might be useful as artificial blood vessels. The material can transfer not only electrical information but also various molecules." In the information world, such bio-tech promises more efficient alternatives to conventional computer hard disk drives that usually have two neodymium magnets. Neodymium magnets, comprising a mixture of neodymium, iron, and boron, are considered the strongest magnets in the world. The neodymium magnets propel the actuator - the device that moves to read and write data. Using magnetic force in the data processing movement increases long life of the drive, instead of earlier generation of motor-powered hard drives. With current research, tiny bacteria could be basis for the next generation of storage and processing devices to share the dizzily multiplying information oceans in the Internet-connected world. Communication technology giants such as Cisco, IBM and Hewlett-Packard estimate that, by the year 2015, total information content worldwide grow from around 1.8 zettabytes in 2012 to about 7.9 zettabytes - or about 18 million US Libraries of Congress. One zettabyte = one million petabytes = one million GBs or gigabytes. Google processes about 24 petabytes of data per day, and one zettabyte can contain content of about 350 billion DVDs. But are such microscopic devices poised to do the donkey's work in carrying mountainous data, life-saving medical aids, computers and electronics based on biology a 100% certainty? Will scientists in the 22nd century discover that bacteria too has intelligence and feelings and dreams? Would bacteria-rights activists be functioning as normally in year 2112 as animal rights activists do now? And how long before Dell, Lenovo, Compaq, Intel and their ilk sell bacterial PCs, notebooks and processors? Staniland expects to see these synthetic biology technologies in public use within the next 15 years. "I cannot say about the cost of these devices, but research is always expensive," she says, "As technology develops, they will be more precise and hopefully cheap". Orville and Wilbur Wright too may not have anticipated space shuttles and transoceanic airliners when they tested their biplane glider in 1900. More immediately certain is the British-Japanese project feeding growing global interest in biological computers and electronics. Another project declared successful earlier this February involved the Scripps Research Institute in California, the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology [5] and Professor Ehud Keinans team building a computer using bio-molecules and DNA. Keinan explained how the DNA-based computers merged biology and computer science: "In contrast to electronic computers, there are computing machines in which all four components of traditional computers [hardware, software, input, and output] are nothing but molecules ... for example, all biological systems and even entire living organisms are such computers. Every one of us is a biomolecular computer, a machine in which all four components are molecules that 'talk' to one another logically" This concept is similar but the characteristics are completely different with our nano-tubes and designed DNA structure, says Tanaka. "By the combination of DNA and our novel techniques, highly complicated 3D structure devices for various information transferring can be made in the future". Essentially, bio-tech scientists such as Tanaka, Staniland and Keinan are working to produce technologies duplicating the technology cells of living use to store and process information while performing various bodily functions. In effect, the idea is to use billions of years of evolution in the machinery of living beings to create nature-based super technology. Sarah Staniland and Masayoshi Tanaka are from a department that covers astronomy as well as physics, and their work based on arrays of bacterial magnets could widen the scope and depth of technology similar to an array of linked telescopes helping the study of stars and galaxies. It's a multiplier power effect, with some of the smallest living creatures in nature potentially serving a gigantic information-creating world whose content doubles every 24 months. Notes 1. 'Bacterial builders on site for computer construction', Phys.Org. May 7, 2012. 2. Biotemplated Magnetic Nanoparticle Arrays and Fabrication of Lipid Tubules with Embedded Quantum Dots by Membrane Tubulation Protein. Johanna M. Galloway, Jonathan P. Bramble, Andrea E Rawlings, Gavin Burnell, Stephen D Evans, Sarah S Staniland. (Small, 2012). 3. Biomimetic Nanomaterials Team, University of Leeds, Britain. 4. Fabrication of Lipid Tubules with Embedded Quantum Dots by Membrane Tubulation Protein. Tanaka, M, Critchley, K, Matsunaga, T, Evans, S D and Staniland, S (Small, 2012). 5. 'Scripps Research and Technion Scientists Develop Biological Computer to Encrypt and Decipher Images. February 7, 2012, Scripps Research Institute,10550 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, San Diego, USA. (Copyright 2012 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
