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DNA Machine
A DNA machine is a molecular machine constructed from DNA. Research into DNA machines was pioneered in the late 1980s by Nadrian Seeman and co-workers from New York University. DNA is used because of the numerous biological tools already found in nature that can affect DNA, and the immense knowledge of how DNA works previously researched by biochemists. DNA machines can be logically designed since DNA assembly of the double helix is based on strict rules of base pairing that allow portions of the strand to be predictably connected based on their sequence. This "selective stickiness" is a key advantage in the construction of DNA machines. An example of a DNA machine was reported by Bernard Yurke and co-workers at Lucent Technologies in the year 2000, who constructed molecular tweezers out of DNA. The DNA tweezers contain three strands: A, B and C. Strand A latches onto half of strand B and half of strand C, and so it joins them all together. Strand A acts as a hinge so that the tw ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Molecular Machine
A molecular machine, nanite, or nanomachine is a molecular component that produces quasi-mechanical movements (output) in response to specific stimuli (input). In cellular biology, macromolecular machines frequently perform tasks essential for life, such as DNA replication and ATP synthesis. The expression is often more generally applied to molecules that simply mimic functions that occur at the macroscopic level. The term is also common in nanotechnology where a number of highly complex molecular machines have been proposed that are aimed at the goal of constructing a molecular assembler. For the last several decades, chemists and physicists alike have attempted, with varying degrees of success, to miniaturize machines found in the macroscopic world. Molecular machines are at the forefront of cellular biology research. The 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir J. Fraser Stoddart, and Bernard L. Feringa for the design and synthesis of molecular ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nadrian Seeman
Nadrian C. "Ned" Seeman (December 16, 1945 – November 16, 2021) was an American nanotechnologist and crystallographer known for inventing the field of DNA nanotechnology. Biography Seeman studied biochemistry at the University of Chicago and crystallography at the University of Pittsburgh. He became a faculty member at the State University of New York at Albany, and in 1988 moved to the Department of Chemistry at New York University. He is most noted for his development of the concept of DNA nanotechnology beginning in the early 1980s. In fall 1980, while at a campus pub, Seeman was inspired by the M. C. Escher woodcut ''Depth'' to realize that a three-dimensional lattice could be constructed from DNA. He realized that this could be used to orient target molecules, simplifying their crystallographic study by eliminating the difficult process of obtaining pure crystals. In pursuit of this goal, Seeman's laboratory published the synthesis of the first three-dimensional nan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the non-denominational all-male institution began its first classes near City Hall based on a curriculum focused on a secular education. The university moved in 1833 and has maintained its main campus in Greenwich Village surrounding Washington Square Park. Since then, the university has added an engineering school in Brooklyn's MetroTech Center and graduate schools throughout Manhattan. NYU has become the largest private university in the United States by enrollment, with a total of 51,848 enrolled students, including 26,733 undergraduate students and 25,115 graduate students, in 2019. NYU also receives the most applications of any private institution in the United States and admission is considered highly selective. NYU is organized int ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Biochemist
Biochemists are scientists who are trained in biochemistry. They study chemical processes and chemical transformations in living organisms. Biochemists study DNA, proteins and Cell (biology), cell parts. The word "biochemist" is a portmanteau of "biological chemist." Biochemists also research how certain chemical reactions happen in cells and Tissue (biology), tissues and observe and record the effects of Product (chemistry), products in food additives and Medication, medicines. Biochemist researchers focus on playing and constructing research experiments, mainly for developing new products, updating existing products and analyzing said products. It is also the responsibility of a biochemist to present their research findings and create Grant writing, grant proposals to obtain Funding of science, funds for future research. Biochemists study aspects of the immune system, the expressions of genes, isolating, analyzing, and synthesizing different products, mutations that lead to ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lucent Technologies
Lucent Technologies, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications equipment company headquartered in Murray Hill, New Jersey. It was established on September 30, 1996, through the divestiture of the former AT&T Technologies business unit of AT&T Corporation, which included Western Electric and Bell Labs. Lucent was merged with Alcatel SA of France on December 1, 2006, forming Alcatel-Lucent. Alcatel-Lucent was absorbed by Nokia in January 2016. Name Lucent means "light-bearing" in Latin. The name was applied for in 1996 at the time of the split from AT&T. The name was widely criticised, as the logo was to be, both internally and externally. Corporate communications and business cards included the strapline 'Bell Labs Innovations' in a bid to retain the prestige of the internationally famous research lab, within a new business under an as-yet unknown name. This same linguistic root also gives Lucifer, "the light bearer" (from lux, 'light', and ferre, 'to bear'), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Molecular Tweezers
Molecular tweezers, and molecular clips, are host molecules with open cavities capable of binding guest molecules. The open cavity of the molecular tweezers may bind guests using non-covalent bonding which includes hydrogen bonding, metal coordination, hydrophobic forces, van der Waals forces, π-π interactions, and/or electrostatic effects. These complexes are a subset of macrocyclic molecular receptors and their structure is that the two "arms" that bind the guest molecule between them are only connected at one end leading to a certain flexibility of these receptor molecules (induced fit model). History The term "molecular tweezers" was first used by Whitlock. The class of hosts was developed and popularized by Zimmerman in the mid-1980s to early 1990s and later by Klärner. Examples Some molecular tweezers bind aromatic guests. These molecular tweezers consist of a pair of anthracene arms held at a distance that allows aromatic guests to gain π-π interactions from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fullerenes
A fullerene is an allotrope of carbon whose molecule consists of carbon atoms connected by single and double bonds so as to form a closed or partially closed mesh, with fused rings of five to seven atoms. The molecule may be a hollow sphere, ellipsoid, tube, or many other shapes and sizes. Graphene (isolated atomic layers of graphite), which is a flat mesh of regular hexagonal rings, can be seen as an extreme member of the family. Fullerenes with a closed mesh topology are informally denoted by their empirical formula C''n'', often written C''n'', where ''n'' is the number of carbon atoms. However, for some values of ''n'' there may be more than one isomer. The family is named after buckminsterfullerene (C60), the most famous member, which in turn is named after Buckminster Fuller. The closed fullerenes, especially C60, are also informally called buckyballs for their resemblance to the standard ball of association football ("soccer"). Nested closed fullerenes have been named ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tetrahedron
In geometry, a tetrahedron (plural: tetrahedra or tetrahedrons), also known as a triangular pyramid, is a polyhedron composed of four triangular faces, six straight edges, and four vertex corners. The tetrahedron is the simplest of all the ordinary convex polyhedra and the only one that has fewer than 5 faces. The tetrahedron is the three-dimensional case of the more general concept of a Euclidean simplex, and may thus also be called a 3-simplex. The tetrahedron is one kind of pyramid, which is a polyhedron with a flat polygon base and triangular faces connecting the base to a common point. In the case of a tetrahedron the base is a triangle (any of the four faces can be considered the base), so a tetrahedron is also known as a "triangular pyramid". Like all convex polyhedra, a tetrahedron can be folded from a single sheet of paper. It has two such nets. For any tetrahedron there exists a sphere (called the circumsphere) on which all four vertices lie, and another sphere ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Förster Resonance Energy Transfer
Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET), fluorescence resonance energy transfer, resonance energy transfer (RET) or electronic energy transfer (EET) is a mechanism describing energy transfer between two light-sensitive molecules ( chromophores). A donor chromophore, initially in its electronic excited state, may transfer energy to an acceptor chromophore through nonradiative dipole–dipole coupling. The efficiency of this energy transfer is inversely proportional to the sixth power of the distance between donor and acceptor, making FRET extremely sensitive to small changes in distance. Measurements of FRET efficiency can be used to determine if two fluorophores are within a certain distance of each other. Such measurements are used as a research tool in fields including biology and chemistry. FRET is analogous to near-field communication, in that the radius of interaction is much smaller than the wavelength of light emitted. In the near-field region, the excited chromophore e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
DNA Walker
A DNA walker is a class of nucleic acid nanomachines where a nucleic acid "walker" is able to move along a nucleic acid "track". The concept of a DNA walker was first defined and named by John H. Reif in 2003. A nonautonomous DNA walker requires external changes for each step, whereas an autonomous DNA walker progresses without any external changes. Various nonautonomous DNA walkers were developed, for example Shin controlled the motion of DNA walker by using 'control strands' which needed to be manually added in a specific order according to the template's sequence in order to get the desired path of motion. In 2004 the first autonomous DNA walker, which did not require external changes for each step, was experimentally demonstrated by the Reif group. DNA walkers have functional properties such as a range of motion extending from linear to 2 and 3-dimensional, the ability to pick up and drop off molecular cargo, performing DNA-templated synthesis, and increased velocity of motio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
DNA Nanotechnology
DNA nanotechnology is the design and manufacture of artificial nucleic acid structures for technological uses. In this field, nucleic acids are used as non-biological engineering materials for nanotechnology rather than as the carriers of genetic information in living cells. Researchers in the field have created static structures such as two- and three-dimensional crystal lattices, nanotubes, polyhedra, and arbitrary shapes, and functional devices such as molecular machines and DNA computers. The field is beginning to be used as a tool to solve basic science problems in structural biology and biophysics, including applications in X-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy of proteins to determine structures. Potential applications in molecular scale electronics and nanomedicine are also being investigated. The conceptual foundation for DNA nanotechnology was first laid out by Nadrian Seeman in the early 1980s, and the field began to attract widespread int ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Genetics Techniques
Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar working in the 19th century in Brno, was the first to study genetics scientifically. Mendel studied "trait inheritance", patterns in the way traits are handed down from parents to offspring over time. He observed that organisms (pea plants) inherit traits by way of discrete "units of inheritance". This term, still used today, is a somewhat ambiguous definition of what is referred to as a gene. Trait inheritance and molecular inheritance mechanisms of genes are still primary principles of genetics in the 21st century, but modern genetics has expanded to study the function and behavior of genes. Gene structure and function, variation, and distribution are studied within the context of the cell, the organism (e.g. dominance), and within the context o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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