{"id":3818,"date":"2020-02-25T12:28:31","date_gmt":"2020-02-25T12:28:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/?p=3818"},"modified":"2020-02-25T14:45:27","modified_gmt":"2020-02-25T14:45:27","slug":"nano-tweezers-for-the-extraction-of-a-single-molecule-of-a-cell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/nano-tweezers-for-the-extraction-of-a-single-molecule-of-a-cell\/3818\/","title":{"rendered":"Nano-tweezers for the extraction of a single molecule of a cell"},"content":{"rendered":"
Dr Paolo Actis, from the School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the University of Leeds<\/a>, played a key role in this research programme, collaborating with senior chemistry professors at Imperial College London<\/a> on the interdisciplinary challenge of developing nano-tweezers.<\/p>\n Dr Actis has just received \u20ac4m from the European Union\u2019s Horizon 2020<\/a> to the SENTINEL project. SENTINEL<\/a> will train academic and industry researchers to apply this type of \u2018nanoelectrochemistry\u2019.<\/p>\n These nano-tweezers are formed from a sharp glass rod terminating with a pair of electrodes made from a carbon-based material, similar to graphite. The tip is less than 50 nanometres in diameter and is split into two electrodes, with a 10 to 20-nanometre gap between them. A nanometre is one-millionth of a millimetre.<\/p>\n By applying an alternating voltage, this small gap creates a powerful highly localised electrical field that can trap and extract the small contents of cells such as DNA and transcription factors \u2013 molecules that can change the activity of genes.<\/p>\n Dr Actis said: \u201cWe are continuously expanding our knowledge on how cells function, but many unanswered questions remain. This is especially true for individual cells that are of the same type, such as brain, muscle or fat cells, but have very different compositions at the single-molecule level.<\/p>\n \u201cCataloguing the diversity of seemingly identical cells can help researchers to better understand fundamental cellular processes and design improved models of disease, and even new patient-specific therapies.<\/p>\n \u201cHowever, traditional methods for studying these differences typically involve bursting the cell, resulting in all of its contents getting mixed. This results in the loss of spatial information \u2013 how the contents were laid out in relation to each other, and dynamic information, such as molecular changes in the cell over time.<\/p>\n \u201cThe development of these nanoscale tweezers therefore solves a major problem and could help scientists in the future improve understanding of how our bodies work.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Researchers at University of Leeds have developed \u2018nano-tweezers\u2019 which can extract single molecules from living cells without destroying them. Dr Paolo Actis, from the School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the University of Leeds, played a key role in this research programme, collaborating with senior chemistry professors at Imperial College London on the interdisciplinary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3820,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[766,24429],"tags":[763],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n“Traditional methods for studying these differences typically involve bursting the cell”<\/h3>\n