ScienceDaily
Summary: An easy-to-use device promises to help scientists better understand natural and human-designed nanotechnologies — and identify new drugs.
Researchers at Université de Montréal have created a nanoantenna to monitor the motions of proteins. Reported this week in Nature Methods, the device is a new method to monitor the structural change of proteins over time — and may go a long way to helping scientists better understand natural and human-designed nanotechnologies.
“The results are so exciting that we are currently working on setting up a start-up company to commercialize and make this nanoantenna available to most researchers and the pharmaceutical industry,” said UdeM chemistry professor Alexis Vallée-Bélisle, the study’s senior author.
An antenna that works like a two-way radio
Over 40 years ago, researchers invented the first DNA synthesizer to create molecules that encode genetic information. “In recent years, chemists have realized that DNA can also be employed to build a variety of nanostructures and nanomachines,” added the researcher, who also holds the Canada Research Chair in Bioengineering and Bionanotechnology.
