Nano Nano

I noticed that Angela Belcher’s TEDx talk just went online and I searched my archives for her name. We last met in 2002 in Dallas at the nanoventures conference. This is the image that popped up.

She was just amazing. This was when she was at UT Austin, and she was using accelerated artificial evolution to rapidly breed M13 bacteriophage to infect bacteria in such a way that they bind and organize semiconducting materials with molecular precision. These are the badass sci-fi-looking viruses that infect bacteria and hijack them to express surface coat proteins. The viruses are easier to vary than the bacteria themselves.

Back then, she got the proteins to selectively bind to various inorganic materials to make the UT logo.

Now at MIT, she is using the viral vector to make batteries, fuels and solar cells.

5 responses to “Nano Nano”

liu_yi_feng

Apr 29, 2011 at 6:59 am

awesome!

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solerena

Apr 29, 2011 at 4:30 pm

yep, great talk – sounds like it became a very hardworking and smart bacteria thanks to M13…and the portrait in the darkness is cool… your archive will be probably a part of some virtual museum someday:)

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chemical business

Apr 30, 2011 at 12:32 pm

I am reasonably certain that we met at this event… Not sure if it was this year or the following year, but the highlight was Ray Kurzweil beaming himself in via holograph, to give the keynote.

I was starting SouthWest NanoTechnologies (SWeNT) at the time, and would later start a competing single-wall carbon nanotube company (Nanopolaris/Unidym). Small world!

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Bill York

May 2, 2011 at 3:43 pm

The virus pictures you linked to remind me of the Swift poem:

So, naturalists observe, a flea
Hath smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite ’em,
And so proceed ad infinitum.

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Nano Nano

5 responses to “Nano Nano”

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