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To make the fibers, Sotzing and his colleagues make a solution of salmon DNA and mix in the two types of dye. The solution is pumped slowly out from a fine needle, and a voltage is applied between the needle tip and a grounded copper plate covered with a glass slide. As the liquid jet comes out, it dries and forms long nanofibers that are deposited on the glass slide as a mat. The researchers then spin this nanofiber mat directly on the surface of an ultraviolet LED to make a white-light emitter.
During the fiber-spinning process, the two different dye molecules automatically attach themselves to two different locations on the DNA. The researchers have found in previous work that the nanofiber mats produce 10 times brighter light than thin films of the dye-containing DNA.
"It's really very cool [work], and I think that it has practical promise," says Aaron Clapp, a professor of chemical and biological engineering at Iowa State University. "[But] it seems like an overly dramatic way of doing it."
Clapp speculates that instead of relying on energy transfer between the two fluorescent dyes, you could just change their ratios and get the colors you want.
However, each dye would then require a different input energy source as opposed to just one UV source, Sotzing points out. What's more, energy transfer between two dyes gives better control over the color of the output light.
Walt says that it may be possible to use the first dye to transfer energy to multiple dyes and get an even wider range of colors. "The results reported here suggest DNA-[energy transfer] light emitters are promising," Walt says, "but the ultimate utility will depend on factors such as lifetime and power efficiency."
A breakthrough in DNA origami creates twisted and curved shapes to order.
Dr. Thomas Netzel, a former Chairman of the American Chemical Society wrote a technical review of Vulvox's DNA transistor concept, and stated that it will likely change the world in innumerable ways when three dimensional chips containing millions of times as many transistors as those in current chips show up in robots and speech translators that really understand English and in self driving and self navigating cars. They will be constructed from DNA and modified DNA made on solid phase synthesizers or by Vulvox's proprietary DNA synthesis process. That process can make DNA for nanoelectronics at a production cost hundreds of times less expensive than current methods. Vulvox has been a leader in this field. The same process can be used to manufacture DNA for gene therapy RNA for silencer RNA gene therapy.
DNA has been used to grow and assemble ZnO nanowires for piezo-electric sensors and to generate electricity from vibrations. Vulvox DNA made with our proprietary process might also be in big demand for DNA nanolithography, as a shadow mask to manufacture 2nm wide nanoelectronic circuitry. (click here for details) To view details on constructing DNA circuitry and nanochips, click the above picture. Dr. Netzel's technical review is available on request.
Re: DNA nanoelectrconics project
Neil, how can you call yourself President and Chairman of a company that you are its only employee?
What I'd like to know is how they keep the DNA from breaking down due to... UV radiation. Wasn't that why we needed the ozone layer?
To answer the question upthread: Current white LEDs are actually blue LEDs with a fluorescent material to convert some of that blue light to green and red and so on--we can't make full-colour single LEDs without such trickery (yet). This makes for interestingly spiked colour spectrum diagrams--lots of blue, a deep trench, then a fairly nice bulge green to red. It's why LED flashlights currently give "off" coloured light. I'd like to see how these turn out, as they might actually give fairly even colour. Though you'd probably still need a UV filter to avoid eye damage.
I wonder how they plan to change the colour in-situ... they wouldn't be able to actively pump dyes in such minute quantities to get the LEDs to change colour for display applications. Furthurmore, the technology looks promising for Photonic computing.. but even there we might be able to bring about advancements by considering different frequencies... which are tedious in this case....
My guess is this technology will thrive in the basic applications.... like flashlights, glowing fabrics etc.
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Joro 05
4 Comments
DNA Light..
Why need to convert UV in visible light? Many kinds of luminophor (inorganic i.e. stronger than DNA) already exist. About white light generation, the proper way is by RGB LEDs or quantium dots. Currently LED is the most efficient light source in the market.
Excellent innovation would be if DNA had electroluminiscence properties, to convert directly power into light, like LE Poymer
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