Transistor merges man and machine

Enzyme-nanotube device might eventually help treat diseases

By Eric Bland
Discovery News
updated 6:15 p.m. MT, Wed., June 2, 2010

Man and machine can now be linked more intimately than ever, according to a new article in the journal ACS Nano Letters. Scientists have embedded a nano-sized transistor inside a cell-like membrane and powered it using the cell's own fuel.

The research could lead to new types of human-machine interactions where embedded devices could relay information about the inner workings of disease-related proteins inside the cell membrane, and eventually lead to new ways to read, and even influence, brain or nerve cells.

"This device is as close to the seamless marriage of biological and electronic structures as anything else that people did before," said Aleksandr Noy, a scientist at the University of California at Merced who is a co-author of the recent ACS Nano Letters report. "We can take proteins, real biological machines, and make them part of a working microelectronic circuit."

To create the implanted circuit, the UC scientists began with a simple transistor, an electronic device that is the heart of nearly every cell phone and computer on the planet. Instead of using silicon, the most common material used in transistors, the scientists used a next-generation material known as a carbon nanotube, a tiny straw-shaped material made from a single curved layer of carbon atoms arranged like the panels of a soccer ball.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37478927/ns/technology_and_science-innovation/