Nanochip is reporting from a living cell
Spaniards put chips in living human cellsMembrane
The simplest samples of chips are able to integrate into a biological cell without disrupting its natural work.
A vivid experience was conducted by scientists from the National Center for Microelectronics (IMB-CNM).
Previously, when "crossing" chips and cells, it was either about connecting electronics to a set of neurons using electrodes, or about growing cell cultures on the surface of the chips and their subsequent interaction. Now the experimenters have turned the previous approaches upside down: they have placed chips inside the cells.
The slime mold dictyostelium (Dictyostelium discoideum) cells, one of the most common model organisms in cell biology, as well as human HeLa cells, often used in biomedical research, were taken as experimental subjects.
The team built several polycrystalline silicon chips
with a diameter of 1.5 to 3 micrometers and a thickness of 0.5 micrometers
(the scale ruler in the photo is Wiley-VCH Verlag – 3 microns).
At the first injections of such objects into cells, the survival rate of the latter was low. Then the scientists applied lipofection – the insertion of foreign material by encapsulating the "parcel" in the liposome (lipid vesicle). This radically changed the situation. Even seven days after the implantation of the chips, more than 90% of the cells from the HeLa culture remained in perfect order.
Chip (white dot marked with an arrow) in the cells of the slime mold (top) and HeLa (bottom).
The blue spots are cell nuclei. Scale rulers – 10 micrometers.
A series of frames – various confocal slices confirming that silicon wafers
really are in the middle of living cells
(photo by Rodrigo Gomez-Martinez et al.).
To make sure that more complex chips can be manufactured for the purpose of insertion, the authors experimented with the integration of various materials into "sensors" and with the construction of three-dimensional structures on their surface using a focused ion beam.
Details of the experiments of Spanish scientists can be found in an article in the publication Small (Rodrigo Gómez-Martínez et al., Intracellular Silicon Chips in Living Cells and news in the journal Nanowerk (Future bio-nanotechnology will use computer chips inside living cells).
Previously, researchers conducted experiments on the introduction of various micro- and nanoparticles into cells, for example, for the purpose of drug delivery, but silicon chips created using traditional photolithography have a number of advantages: they can be manufactured with very high precision, they can carry a fraction of logic circuits and even microelectromechanical components.
The forecast for the next 20 years is an increase in the number of transistors that can fit inside one cell.
Such chips can serve as sensors that transmit information about what is happening in the cytoplasm,
this means that they are able to provide a huge service to scientific research and medicine
(illustration by J.A.Plaza, IMB-CNM/CSIC).
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru23.03.2010