NANOTECHNOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL DETECTION AND CHARACTERIZATION

Abstract

Nanotechnology has achieved incredible milestones in the roughly 25 years that it has been recognized as an independent eld of scholarship, but perhaps none has been as signi cant as the tectonic shift it has brought about toward interdisciplinary science. It is now hard to believe that physicists, engineers, chemists and biologist once occupied their own spheres and rarely crossed boundaries to work cooperatively. This is because we are living in an age where all of these disciplines are studied in tandem under the banner of \nano. As a result, each eld has grown: physics has entered a world where quantum mechanics has become an observable; the overcoming of engineering challenges at the nanoscale has enabled precise control of matter and an understanding of how molecular machines might work; chemistry, which has always occurred at these scales, is being understood in new and exciting ways; and biology has undergone a sea change in both understanding and scope. It is the last of these that has inspired the theme of this special issue of Nano LIFE, which focuses on the development and use of nanotechnology for fundamental investigations of biological systems. The tools and techniques o®ered by nanotechnology allow for structures to be created on the same size scale as individual cells and biomolecules, instigating a new \bottom up approach to sensing and characterization that was impossible to envision before. Advances in this emerging eld of \nanobiotechnology are presented in the pages that follow, describing new materials and methods that o®er insight into the basic functions of biology and/ or aid in the transition from fundamental studies to diagnostic and clinical applications. Two articles in this issue look at new nanomaterials with properties designed to enhance biological imaging capabilities. Vance et al. present a new method for producing carbon-coated nanoparticles. The resulting material has potential to overcome the toxicity of conventional quantum dots, which has been an important barrier to their widespread utility. Dorcena et al., on the other hand, demonstrate a new synthesis method for carbon dots Nano LIFE Vol. 3, No. 1 (2013) 1302001 (2 pages) © World Scienti c Publishing Company DOI: 10.1142/S1793984413020017