Tom Andel

Nanotech “lift trucks” move imagination

I’ve told you in past blog posts that I see lift trucks everywhere, even when I’m not trying. I see them in the movies (Star Trek), while shopping (Home Depot) —even on TV. You probably did too if you saw the season finale of 24 this week. In a pivotal scene (and they’re ALL pivotal, aren’t they?), Jack Bauer, sickened by exposure to a bioweapon, seeks refuge from his pursuing enemy by shimmying under a partially-opened garage door and then shutting it the rest of the way via a handy remote control pendant. Said enemy, not being as quick as even a sick Jack Bauer, gets locked outside. Not to worry. We next see two lift truck tines pierce through said door and do what they were designed to do: lift. I hate to pat a bad guy on the back, but that gave new meaning to the word “industrious.”

But that’s nothing compared to what Henry Hess, assistant professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Florida, is doing with lift trucks. He’s working with them so that some day they’ll help the Jack Bauers of the world FIND bioweapons. He might be too late to help Keifer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer, but his work will be a major contribution to the heroes working to protect our supply chains from contamination.

With his new method, Hess doesn’t need pumps or exterior power to help achieve the flushing effect needed to help antibodies latch onto target contaminants and push them all together into one area. He just uses biologically powered molecular lift trucks. These lift trucks are assembled from “motor proteins” that are the driving force in cell division. Hess and his team found a way to manipulate these tiny proteins to perform heavy lifting and transport tasks.  

The researchers squirt the “forklifts” into the central zone of a three-zone circular surface no larger than the period at the end of a sentence. When the surface is exposed to a contaminant, antibodies latch onto it and molecular shuttles start pushing the forklifts into a second zone, where they load aboard fluorescent particles, or tags. All of that stuff is then moved to a third zone, where eventually the combined loads form a line visible under magnification — providing the telltale indicator of the contaminant.

This molecular action may not be caused by real lift trucks, but Hess was the guy who first saw lift trucks under a microscope, not I. And I applaud him for it. If nanotechnology wizards can be inspired by the industrial truck world to come up with new ways to handle materials—even microscopic materials—think of what users of megatechnology can look forward to as intelligent sensors, hybrid power sources and ergonomics start forming big lift trucks everyone will notice.

Tom Andel
tandel4315@aol.com

Posted by Tom Andel on May 21, 2009 | Comments (1)