NANO SLEUTH

Came through a very interesting article this morning and so wanted to share.

 National Centre for Biological Science (NCBS) Bangalore based researchers Yamuna Krishnan & Souvik Modi gifted the world a tool that could play at being a sleuth (detective) within a living cell & help scientists develop the best treatment for a disease.

They demonstrated that 2 or more extremely tiny DNA devices which they call as nano-device can be dispatched inside a cell to report on goings-on within. They created this device by cooking & cooling commercially available DNA strands with Potassium chloride.

These tiny device is 14nm long and 2nm in diameter, helped the scientists accurately measure the pH values of subcellular loctions where they were parked. The authors further added that "if the pH is found to be different from normal, we know something is amiss".

The application potential of the technique is humongous. It can be great tool for drug discoverers. And this may give us the next generation probes for sensing intracellular signals also.

This study appeared in Nature Nanotechnology recently.

Souvik Modi                                                                                        Yamuna Krishnan