Nanotechnology: Listening To Track Motion, Origami To Make DNA Motors

Abstract

Nanotechnology is making it possible to detect sound waves at the microscopic level—in effect, to listen to microbial cells, according to physicists Alexander Ohlinger, Jochen Feldmann, and their collaborators at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany. Separately, a nano-scale, DNA-based motor was programmed to run on a series of tracks with multiple switches, according to Masayuki Endo and Hiroshi Sugiyama from Kyoto University in Japan and Andrew Tuberfield from Oxford University in the United Kingdom, and their collaborators. The report from Ohlinger appears in the January 6, 2012 Physical Review Letters 108, 018101, while the report on the DNA motor is in the January 2012 Nature Nanotechnology (doi:10.1038/nnano.2011.253).