Posted on 12/10/2005 11:50:27 AM PST by md2576
Computer simulations show that a common nanoparticle called a buckyball has the potential to damage DNA. The simulations suggest that buckyballs bind strongly to the DNA strands, distorting the molecules and interfering with functions like self-repair.
Researchers caution that the simulations do not prove that buckyballs actually do any damage in the real world. But the work does raise another concern about possible dangers of nanotechnology.
On Thursday, the US Environmental Protection Agency released a draft paper that called for more research into the safety of nanotechnology, saying that there are a number of unanswered questions about possible effects on health and the environment.
The worry is that even familiar materials, such as carbon, might have completely different health effects at the nanoscale. One recent study, for instance, found that buckyballs accumulate in the brains of largemouth bass and cause cell damage. Drug delivery
Buckyballs, or buckminsterfullerenes (C60), are hollow spheres made from 60 carbon atoms. Because of their unique physical properties they are being considered for many applications, from drug delivery to fuel cells.
Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, and Vanderbilt University in Nashville, both in the US, decided to investigate how buckyballs would react if they came into contact with DNA. They used standard biomolecular simulation software to model two strands of DNA, with 12 base pairs each, interacting with two buckyballs over about 20 nanoseconds.
They found that the buckyballs bind strongly to DNA, with about the same energy that drugs bind to receptors on the surface of cells. When the buckyballs bound, they distorted the strands of DNA. Peter Cummings, a Vanderbilt chemical engineer, says it seems likely the interaction would interfere with the DNA's function, disrupting replication and repair and increasing mutation rates.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
There's already science fiction novels suggesting that nanotechnology can be used to kill people, or alter them. It's not all that farfetched.
But this is bad news for buckyball enthusiasts.
This will not please Glenn Reynolds.
No, No it won't
In the computer game Deus Ex it could be used both ways. The Gray Death nano-virus (central to the game's plot) was actually the same nanites that gave the Dentons their enhanced abilities. The only difference betwen nano-virus and nano augmentation was the propgramming of the nanites themselves.
buckyballs ping
There goes all those nano-technology jobs...
Time for a raise boss.
Very cool. I will have to check those out. The novel I am writing features it pretty heavily too. The enemy uses a nano-virus weapon and the only cure to it is a nano-counter-virus or a high dose of ionizing radiation.
Mostly it's the name.
Continue with the Buckyball research!
Mutations for Darwin!
Mutations for Darwin!
This time of year talk usually turns to Shweaty Balls.
All kinds of activists are opposed to nanotechnology, because it will be a huge money-maker in the very long term. Activists of this type act as a kind of social troll who loudly castigates productive folks who go tramping on his bridge. He does this with the aim of getting paid, somehow (he calls it oversight, or conducting a study). And then this troll asks to get thanked for playing this expensive and unproductive role.
Think of the troll as a kind of progress "toll taker".
Activists like this also fear nanotechnology because they don't understand it. And they don't understand much, come to think of it...
Hey you stole my tagline! LOL
When genetically modified foods came out, they trundled out this Scottish nut to allege that genetically-modified corn would accumulate in the gut of butterflies, thereby killing them.
Basically a shrewd re-hash of, Silent Spring.
Of course, it was all BS, and it is a fact that about 80% of all US food is somehow genetically modified.
Yes --80%.
Makes me wonder why they have not done this already.
I met Bucky Fuller twice in Maine. The first time was when my mother-in-law's lobster boat went up on a shoal by Bear Island in Penobscot Bay. We were rescued and after the tide rose pulled off by another lobster boat containing Bucky Fuller, Doctor Spock (the pediatrician, not the alien), Walter Cronkite, and Eliot Porter.
We went in to their dock to check our boat out because there was a smell of gasoline. When they pushed us off for the return journey, Bucky reached out and gave the boat a delicate little spin, so as it drifted out from the dock it turned around, and was headed toward the harbor entrance when I started the engine. He clearly had a good spatial sense.
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