I work out of our office on One Market Street in San Francisco. My standup-desk is right across from our Gallery at One Market. One of our newer exhibits is called Powers of Design. It was first featured at the Technology Entertainment & Design (TED) conference last year. Powers of Design depicts the size of everything from the inconceivably small to the mind-blowingly large. I thought I'd cover the exhibit elements, one at a time, over the next few months. I started small and am working my way up. This is my eighth post on this topic — each one featuring an item 10 times larger than the preceding one.
Image created by Campbell Strong, Dr. Shawn Douglas, and Dr. Gael McGill using Molecular Maya and CADnano.
10-8 MAGNITUDE
0.000,000,01 m
10 Nanometers
Cancer Fighting Nano Robot
20 Nanometers
Think what you’ve seen so far is cool? One word—robots. Need we say more? But not just any robots; nano robots. Some incredible things are happening at the nanoscale, like DNA origami, the nanoscale folding of DNA to create various shapes and 3D structures.
CADnano is a software tool used by scientists to accelerate the creation and modification of DNA origami designs. One of the most exciting potential applications of this technology is the creation of agents at the nanoscale, such as transport systems (or robots if you will) to interface with biological systems to address medical challenges. Or to put it a different way, to deliver lethal doses of medication to baddies like cancer cells. In other words, killer robots. How cool is that? Based on differences in DNA structure, the killer robots only attack cancerous cells and leave the normal cells alone.
In the future, treating cancer by blasting all of our cells with radiation to kill the bad ones and only slightly damage the good ones will seem barbaric. It will be like attending to one's lawn by individually pulling each weed versus spraying the entire lawn with weed killer. In the future, before a doctor writes a patient a prescription, the first thing he will do is collect a sample of his DNA by swabbing the inside of his cheek. The pharmacy will then craft the medicine specifically for the patient.
Thanks to Global Content Manager, Matt Tierney, for the images and text that comprise the exhibit element. This is just one of the many exhibits in the gallery at One Market in San Francisco. The gallery is open to the public on Wednesdays from 12 pm to 5 pm, and admission is free. Visit us.
Previous posts on this topic include:
- 10-15 Protons and Neutrons
- 10-14 Atomic Nucleus of a Uranium Atom
- 10-13 Nada, Zilch, Zero, Zip
- 10-12 Gamma Rays
- 10-11 Fluorine Ion
- 10-10 Wavelength of Hard X-Rays
- 10-9 Carbon Nanotubes
Future blog posts will cover:
- 10-7 HIV Virus
- 10-6 Red Blood Cells
- 10-5 Sand
- 10-4 Microelectromechanical Systems
- 10-3 Sonata Silicium Watch Components
- 10-2 Lego
- 10-1 Prosthetic Fairing
- 100 Biome Concept Car
- 101 Ma'erkang Housing Reconstruction
- 102 Shanghai Tower
- 103 Bay Bridge
- 104 Masdar City
- 105 Palm Islands
- 106 The Moon
- 107 Earth
- 108 Jupiter
- 109 The Sun
- 1010 Distance Light Travels in 34 Seconds
- 1011 Distance from Jupiter to the Sun
- 1012 Distance from Pluto to the Sun
- 1013 Voyager 2
- 1014 The Solar System
- 1015 Cat's Eye Nebula
- 1016 Pillars of Creation
- 1017 Great Orion Nebula
- 1018 M15 Globular Cluster
- 1019 Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy
- 1020 Triangulum Galaxy
- 1021 The Milky Way
- 1022 IC 1101
- 1023 Local Group of Galaxies
- 1024 The Local Supercluster
- 1025 3C 273
- 1026 Outer Limit of the Universe
Measurement is alive in the lab.
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