Biological complexity: nanotechnology explores complexity (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, April 09, 2020, 19:13 (1477 days ago) @ David Turell

Study of the nanotechnology of life teaches us how to understand the intricacies of protein formation and integration as life emerges from these multiple highly controlled integrated reactions:

https://aeon.co/essays/the-future-is-nano-and-it-will-revolutionise-medical-science?utm...

"Clever scientists with broad visions started to realise that a new kind of technology, prophesied by Richard Feynman in the 1950s, was finally materialising, as researchers achieved the capacity to visualise, fabricate and manipulate matter at the nanometre scale.

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"From the start, nanotechnologists have been involved with and inspired by biology, primarily because the molecular players and the main drug targets in medicine – proteins, DNA and other biomolecules – are nanosized. But we physicists were also fascinated by the capacity of biology to produce materials that adapt, evolve, survive and even think – materials that surpass human technological abilities in every possible way.

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"Far from being the static entities featured in traditional biochemistry books, proteins have been observed performing complex yet surprisingly familiar movements that sometimes bear an uncanny resemblance to macroscopic human-made machines. Some work as nanomotors that rotate to maximise the efficiency of chemical reactions; others can ‘walk’ on molecular tracks with a processive ‘hand-over-hand’ movement that allows them to transport cargos around the cell.

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"At the same time, progress in genetics and biochemistry led to a greater understanding of the chemical activity of proteins and their relation to the information stored in cellular DNA" (my bold)
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"Bacteria and cancers are teaching us the same lesson that we are learning in other aspects of our relationship with nature: namely, that life resists reductionist approaches and bounces back with complex behaviours that thwart our optimistic strategies to dominate it.

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"In nature, they result from the careful and deterministic folding of molecular strings (polymers) consisting of combinations of 20 different units (amino acids). They can take on any imaginable shape and function at the nanoscale. In fact, we still don’t know how many different proteins are in our bodies (perhaps it is unknowable), since our cells could have the capacity to create and modify proteins as and when they are needed.... No human-made artificial nanotechnology can dream of such capacities, but we can try to learn how life does it. (my bold)

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"This realisation came from the discovery made at Harvard by Chris Sander and Debora Marks of structural ‘staples’ (formed by amino acids sticking to each other) that hold a protein molecule together. Sanders and Marks looked at information contained in the genomic DNA of organisms that have proteins related to each other via a shared evolutionary history. When the staples are inserted into the computer model, it’s possible to explore how the protein folds within those constraints.

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"What’s interesting here is that the story has not unfolded quite as the pioneers of nanotechnology imagined, or as early visions of ‘nanorobots’ predicted, because this nanotechnology no longer emerges from a reductionist standpoint that envisages wholly artificial nanomachines deployed inside living cells. Instead, it utilises nature itself, harnessing its complexity and evolutionary history to create nanostructures.

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"What the new nanotechnology seems to point toward is an inexorable dimming of the boundaries between the sciences. Though still in an embryonic state, the new transmaterial science of producing artificial materials inspired by biology is already being used to create new medicines, develop new strategies for regenerating tissues and organs, and improve the responses of the immune system. In parallel, hybrid bioinorganic devices that mimic biological processes will soon be used in new computers and electronic devices. By increasingly refining our ability to learn biology using the methods of physics, nanotechnologists are throwing off the yolk of reductionism, and learning how to distil the recipes of the Universe in order to fabricate and assemble matter from the nanometre scale up."

Comment: The startling degree of complexity, and the fact that we still do not know how many different proteins are in our bodies tells us how little we still know about the biochemistry of life. we are determining some of the information that life uses in shaping the proteins of life's processes. It also tells us a designer is required. I've only culled out one side of the info. The article discusses the successes of nanotechnology production of necessary results and should be read completely.