Biological Farmers of Australia (BFA), an organization for Australia’s organic industry, and its subsidiary company Australian Certified Organic have released a new policy dealing with nanotechnology in the organic industry.

Researchers from the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) report new study results indicating that quantum dots can be transferred through the food chain from single celled organisms to multicelled organisms, but that the amount of the quantum dots transferred is relatively low and they were not shown to concentrate in the multicelled organisms.

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the U.S. report that they have developed a paper-like membrane constructed of potassium manganese oxide nanowires that can absorb 20 times its weight in oil and allows the oil to be recovered, potentially leading to a new solution for cleaning up oil spills and removing organic pollutants from water.

Korean scientists have developed a nanotech method of producing filament-shaped artificial viruses that, in preliminary experiments, show promise in delivering genetic materials and other molecules into cultured human cells. From “A new artificial virus construction with therapeutic potential“, written by Yun Xie at Ars Technica:

For years, scientists have been trying to create artificial viruses that are as proficient as natural ones in delivering materials to cells. Successful, artificial viruses could carry therapeutic agents into human cells to treat a variety of diseases. Unfortunately, synthesizing an artificial virus with the ideal shape and size for maximum delivery efficiency is extremely difficult. A common method for their generation involves polyion coupling, which often leads to aggregates with uncontrollable dimensions.

The Lee research group at Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea found an alternate strategy, one that used pre-organized supramolecular nanostructures to construct, for the first time, a filament-shaped artificial virus. Filamentous shaped nanostructures last longer in vivo, and many natural viruses are filamentous. The process started with the creation of Glu-KW, a β-sheet peptide based supramolecule. Glu-KW’s self-assembled β-sheet contains two linkers: a nucleic acid-binding segment and a carbohydrate ligand. The β-sheet consists of alternating hydrophobic and charged amino acids, assisting the self-assembly. Glu-KW is coated with glucose to shield the charges on the surface of the β ribbon, which increases the chance of cell binding.

…The β ribbon templates are capable of assembling artificial viruses with favorable sizes and shapes. The virus’ simultaneous ability to deliver genetic materials and hydrophobic therapeutic reagents are particularly useful, and the researchers’ approach is flexible and allows for a variety of structural changes to the virus. Until we study the toxicology of these artificial viruses, however, we cannot judge their full potential for treating diseases.

The research was published in Angewandte Chemie (citation)
—Jim

Gold nanoparticles of varying size have been a tool for building nanostructures since the early days of nanotech, but Chinese scientists have recently built an atomically precise structure directed by bonds between gold atoms—a crown of 36 gold atoms coordinating surrounding organic molecules. From “Perfect, Tiny Golden Nano-crown Made“

Chinese researchers have recently made a “golden crown” with a diameter of only a few nanometers. It is a large ring-shaped molecule containing 36 gold atoms. The lords of the ring, a team of researchers from the Universities of Beijing, Hong Kong, and Nanjing report their unusual compound in the journal Angewandte Chemie: the molecular ring structure is held together exclusively by gold-gold bonds and is thus the largest ring system made of gold atoms produced to date.

Large molecular rings have fascinated chemists for over 40 years—ever since the discovery of crown ethers in 1967. The pioneers in this area, C. J. Pederson, J.-M. Lehn, and D. J. Cram received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their discovery in 1987. In the meantime, large molecular ring systems have played an important role in the search for new functional materials and in nanotechnology. The synthesis of ring systems held together exclusively by metal-metal bonds has remained a challenge.

—Jim