Buckyball Antibiotics

Soccer-ball-shaped molecules called buckyballs, or fullerenes, could soon help antibiotics find their goals. Lon Wilson, a chemist at Rice University, has fabricated an antibiotic-fullerene complex that's able to target specific tissues; this new type of molecule opens the possibility of treating infections with far greater efficiency than is possible with conventional drugs.

To treat the bacterial bone infections that occur in a small percentage of patients who undergo orthopedic surgery, for example, Wilson attached two molecules of a potent antibiotic called vancomycin to a fullerene molecule. Then, at a different site on the buckyball, he attached another chemical, which binds only to bone. Because the treatment, which was developed in collaboration with an orthopedic surgeon at Beth Israel Hospital in New York City, precisely targets just the tissue that's affected by the bacteria, patients wouldn't need as large a dose of the antibiotic to treat their infections. Wilson hopes to test the new antibiotic in animals in the next year. He is also working on buckyball versions of the antibiotic Cipro for treating anthrax infections. Such drugs could latch on to anthrax spores in the lungs and destroy the pathogen before it releases its toxin.

Mind Reader

Many disorders of learning, memory, and motor control are caused by abnormal amounts of glutamate, a neurotransmitter in the brain. If glutamate concentrations could be accurately monitored, surgeons could find and remove cells that poorly regulate glutamate levels. So a team led by University of Kentucky neurobiologist Greg Gerhardt has developed microsensors that track the concentration of glutamate quickly enough-and in enough locations simultaneously-to aid in such surgeries. Each sensor consists of at least two recording patches of platinum, coated with an enzyme and polymers, on the end of a ceramic probe five micrometers wide. The coating reacts with the glutamate, creating an electric current proportional to the glutamate concentration. The sensors work on a second-by-second basis, unlike existing devices that take tens of seconds to register changes, says Gerhardt. Placed in an epileptic patient's brain for the duration of surgery, a 60-micrometer-by-700-micrometer array of the sensors could pinpoint the smallest region of tissue that needs to be removed. Gerhardt plans to mass-produce the sensors in about two years at his company, Quanteon, in Lexington, KY.

Calmer Skies

In-flight turbulence is hard to predict and the leading cause of injuries on airplanes. Researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO, have developed software to improve turbulence prediction. When flying through storms, pilots use onboard Doppler radars to scout for drier areas, assuming that these will be calmer. But turbulence can still strike. Algorithms in the new software reduce noise in the radar data; warning algorithms then analyze the data to find the amount of movement in the tiny bits of water and ice found even in "dry" areas. The wider the spectrum of velocities among the droplets, the more likely an encounter with turbulence. In flights on a NASA test plane, the software detected about 80 percent of turbulence with at least a minute's warning-enough time to seat passengers and flight attendants and clear aisles.