Developments to Watch
Edited by Otis Port
Putting Protein Production into Overdrive
What if cells had built-in dials that could be turned up or down at will, controlling how much protein they make and how fast they make it? That could be a real coup for the biotech industry, which is struggling to keep up with burgeoning demand for protein-based drugs that treat such ailments as anemia and rheumatoid arthritis.
James J. Collins, a professor of biomedical engineering at Boston University, and Jeff Hasty, a research assistant professor, hope to develop such a dial. Their plan calls for a "genetic oscillator," consisting of two genes that work together. When linked with other cell-regulating mechanisms, the genes would program cells to make specific amounts of proteins. The basic concept behind regulation is to treat cells as if they were electrical circuits--but substituting genes for transistors. "The focus is on using information about genes and proteins as parts that can be put together in a circuit," says Collins. "It's a synthetic gene network."
Such an innovation could be useful for more than just boosting drug production. It could help genomics researchers understand cell behavior by allowing them to better manipulate genes in the lab. And eventually, it might also lead to new ways of administering protein-based drugs, which are usually injected--making biotech medications more effective and palatable for patients. In theory, doctors could remove some cells, encapsulate this technology in them, and return them to the body, where they would produce the required proteins indefinitely.
By Arlene Weintraub
Tripping the LED Fantastic
Forty years after they first appeared, light-emitting diodes are finding lots of uses beyond glowing spots on electronic gear. Next, Sandia National Laboratories aims to overcome the remaining problems that are keeping LEDs from everyday applications.
LEDs have many advantages over incandescent bulbs and even fluorescent tubes. For one, they consume one-tenth as much energy. LEDs also last far longer and emit much less heat. As a result, LEDs have become common in traffic signals, taillights, and high-resolution billboards.
Not everything is rosy, though. Lights made with LED chips cost twice as much as incandescent bulbs. And white-light LEDs still have a bluish cast, although blends of colored LEDs can produce white light. Led by Sandia senior scientist James Gee, two dozen researchers are fiddling with gallium-nitride semiconductor crystals, trying to get them to emit whiter light. Sandia is also collaborating with industry on standards for LED lamps to help reduce manufacturing costs.
By Michael Arndt
Pele, Hamm, and Now...C3PO?
Next month, soccer fans will begin flocking to Japan and Korea for this summer's World Cup games. Chances are, few will go to Fukuoka, on the southern island of Kyushu. But there, on the eve of the World Cup's second-round matches, a June 19 kickoff will launch the week-long RoboCup 2002 contest for soccer-playing robots--including the first humanoid-robot matches. Perhaps a dozen research teams will show off their humanoids. Sweden's Chalmers University of Technology will have four, including a life-size design, dubbed Priscilla, built on a plastic model of the human skeleton--and slated to go toe-to-toe with Murphy, the android from rival Uppsala University. But most players will probably be squat midgets reminiscent of the Sony Dream Robot that kicked a soccer ball at its debut in November, 2000.
The players at the past five annual RoboCup events have been wheeled or four-legged robots--or simulations. Their soccer skills have grown rapidly. But nobody expects the ersatz humans to come even close to a first-time pre-school player. Robots have only recently learned to walk autonomously on two legs, so taking up a kicking position over a soccer ball, then balancing on one leg and knocking the ball toward a goal signals major progress. And because RoboCup winners share their secrets, soccer skills should spread rapidly. Perhaps within a decade or so, robots will be ready to begin taking on human players.
Innovations
-- Biodegradable plastics with a "shape memory" have been developed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They return to a permanent, predefined shape at a specific temperature, but can be compressed or twisted into other shapes at other temperatures. According to MIT chemical engineer Robert Langer, potential applications include temporary medical devices that could be inserted in the body via keyhole surgery, then expanded to their real size--or a thread that reverts to a corkscrew shape to serve as a stent and help keep blood vessels unblocked.
-- Carbon nanotubes have been hailed as the key to revolutionary material properties for everything from biomedical products to chips. Now, those potentials should be easier to commercialize. Researchers at Rice University, led by chemist John Margrave, have found a way to attach fluorine "handles" to the inert carbon molecules. Fluorine is highly chemically active, so the fluorine reaction sites mean compounds containing nanotubes can now be tailored for a wide range of jobs.
-- A mysterious family of membrane filters has been created by a team of Australian and U.S. scientists. The polymer-based filters contain silica nanoparticles whose extremely small size produces very strange results: The membrane's basic filtering capabilities are transformed, resulting in novel "reverse-selective" filters. That means the membranes allow larger molecules to pass through and screen out smaller molecules--the opposite of other filters. As the team reports in the Apr. 19 issue of Science, the new filters may find applications in petrochemical refining, drug synthesis, environmental cleanups, and water purification.
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Copyright 2002 , by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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